Seeing the possibilities

WINTERGREEN, Va. -- Ski season is here, and with it comes the prickly touch of wind-blown snow, the swoosh of skis and the pounding surge of adrenaline. It happens every year at about this time, not only for millions of able-bodied skiers, but also for thousands of skiers with disabilities.

Through a combination of specialized equipment and training, people who might otherwise be left behind when friends and family take to the slopes can now join in the fun.

They're using special rail-like devices, ski-bottomed crutches and tethers to take part in what is known as adaptive skiing.

Their range of disabilities runs the gamut. They include blindness, deafness, amputations, para- and quadriplegia, autism, and other forms of injury, illness and cognitive defects that prevent people from skiing in the more traditional ways.

Adaptive skiing started in 1942 when an Austrian who'd lost his leg attached small skis to his crutches and resumed his favored pastime. The sport got a boost 25 years later when veterans of the U.S. Army's Tenth Mountain Division were organized to teach a group of disabled Vietnam vets how to ski.

Kirk Bauer, executive director of Disabled Sports USA, says adaptive skiing offers a "normalizing experience," adding that it's "an accessible sport that people with almost any disability can enjoy," right along side everyone else on the mountain. And he says that includes tackling the black diamonds, moguls and races at 60 mph.

Bauer estimates that 15 percent of ski resorts now have good adult disabled ski programs and that many also have special youth programs for disabled children.

In some cases, these programs lead to major athletic events. There are usually four big races a year -- in December, January, February and March. The international Paralympic games being held this March in Italy also feature ski competitions.

"Adaptive skiing and snowboarding is an incredibly powerful therapeutic medium," said Michael Zuckerman, who runs the adaptive ski program at Wintergreen Resort in Wintergreen, Va., adding that the rewards are not only for the students and their families, but the instructors as well.

Zuckerman says Wintergreen has taught skiing to more than 650 people with disabilities since the first few in 1984. The program has become so popular he's had to add midweek sessions to accommodate the expanding number of disabled skiers.

Similar programs are also offered at Breckenridge and Winter Park, Colo.; Killington, Vt.; Park City, Utah; Waterville Valley, N.H., and other resorts around the country.

You may see even more disabled skiers and boarders on these and other slopes this season because of the Wounded Warrior Project. It's a private initiative to provide sports rehabilitation programs for injured U.S. soldiers.

Former Army National Guard First Lt. Ed Salau, of Havelock, N.C., lost his left leg in Iraq in 2004. But he says after learning to ski, "I know I can still feel the wind in my face, work up a sweat and take on a challenge."

He first took on that challenge last January at a Wounded Warrior's Weekend at Wintergreen Resort. Salau says he was discouraged at first, but the instructor urged him to try just one more time.

"I went up in the ski lift," he said, "and as fate would have it I looked down in the snow and saw a blind skier." He said "reality set in" and he told himself "to stop whining." Now, he not only skis proficiently, but gives lessons.

Salau says an instructor told him something he'll always remember: "When you get to the top of the mountain all you see is possibility." He says until he reached the top, he didn't understand what that meant.

Wounded Warrior Weekends are scheduled at many of the resorts again this year.