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How the TrailRider was born

In the mid-1980s, Sam Sullivan determined that he wanted to once again do the things that he had loved before becoming a quadriplegic in a skiing accident in 1979. One of those loves was hiking and being in the wilderness.

At about the same time, Sam had started the Tetra Society of North America and had begun to recruit engineers and technicians, who would volunteer their time and talents to design and create unique, customized, low-cost assistive devices for people with significant physical disabilities.

Over coffee one afternoon in the early 1990s, Sam and Tetra's first-ever volunteer engineer, Paul Cermak, talked about hiking and reaching into the wilderness and how it might be made possible for people like Sam. Literally on the back of a napkin (serviette, because we're in Canada), Sam and Paul sketched out what would become the first-ever TrailRider.

In his garage, Paul started with an old folding aluminum chair and added handles front and rear for the power-providers - the "sherpas", who would push and pull the vehicle. He then mounted a pneumatic tire housing underneath and the TrailRider access vehicle emerged - a vehicle that would many times take Sam into the woods and mountains surrounding his hometown of Vancouver.

Since 1995, the human-powered, ecologically friendly TrailRider has been redesigned, rebuilt and retested, over and over again. It has taken hundreds of people with disabilities to places they never thought were attainable. Twice the TrailRider has reached the peak of Mt. Kilimanjaro, in 2002 and 2006.

But not all hikes taken with the TrailRider have been "extreme" adventures, and nor do they have to be. Hikers with disabilities use the TrailRider to visit parks and vacation spots with their able-bodied friends and family members. They have used them for fishing trips and school outings, for summer camps and afternoons at the beach.

In 2005, BCMOS set out to design a new version of the TrailRider that would meet several challenging criteria: It would be lighter in overall weight, be stronger and fully compactable for easy transport. It needed to be ergonomically adjustable for both hikers and Sherpas. And finally, it would feature a suspension system to ease the ride and a highly reliable disc brake system for increased safety.

What emerged was the "Black Diamond" TrailRider model that is proving extremely popular. Hikers with disabilities are now using the Black Diamond from one end of Canada to the other and many are in use in the United States.

An interesting feature of the Black Diamond TrailRider is a special "child insert" seat that can easily adjust to handle little people as well as adults.

In addition, the TrailRider today is complemented by special equipment, such as the BCMOS-designed "Mummy Bag" that allows all participants to safely maintain core body temperatures in all weather conditions. The Mummy Bag is designed to protect hikers from wind, rain, snow and cold temperatures, and they are equipped with side handles to facilitate simple transfers in and out of the TrailRider and wheelchairs.