Handicapped skiers hit the slopes> Unique Sunday River program challenges winter enthusiasts

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NEWRY — Andy Barlow of Hanover makes his way around the Sunday River Ski Resort in Newry on crutches. But once on the slopes, he has few equals. Barlow is a “graduate” of the little-known Maine Handicapped Skiing Program, based at Sunday River.

The program, now in its 13th season, provides free skiing and adaptive equipment for up to 250 skiers with disabilities. The skiers include adults and children who are amputees, arthritics, blind and visually-impaired, and deaf and hearing-impaired.

They may also have developmental disabilities, cerebral palsy, spina bifida, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, polio, spinal cord injuries, seizure disorders, strokes, and traumatic head injuries.

Through Maine Handicapped Skiing, they take to the slopes on traditional skis with poles converted to crutches called “outriggers,” with smaller skis on the bottom, or ski “bras” that tether skis together at the tips for better control.

Individuals with a lower body disability use bi-skis, two skis under a sled-like chair; mono-skis, a single ski under a sled-chair; or sit-skis, a sled-like device propelled and controlled with a paddle type of pole.

With so many individuals training on the slopes, an equal and often larger number of volunteers also are involved.

Dr. Owen “Chip” Crothers, the MHS founder and a Portland orthopedic surgeon, credits a 6-year-old cerebral palsy patient with sparking the idea for the program.

According to Crothers, the young patient, who could barely walk during a visit to his office in 1982, skied past him that year at Sunday River. Observing that this patient could develop the skills to enjoy skiing, Crothers lobbied Sunday River owner Leslie B. Otten to assist him in creating a ski school program for the handicapped at the resort.

In January 1983, eight students with cerebral palsy and spina bifida took to the slopes for Alpine skiing lessons.

The training to initiate the new program was provided at Winter Park, Colo., where the National Sports Center for the Disabled has been providing recreational skiing, competitive race training and summer recreation to thousands of children and adults with disabilities for 25 years.

The two programs can tally their success in numbers, but energy and enthusiasm are noticable byproducts to visitors at the Sunday River program. The enthusiasm emanates from a small building beside the beginners’ slope.

Shortly before Christmas, the tiny lodge was a bustling mass of equipment and volunteers. Weather conditions forced the program’s 20 days of scheduled trianing to be condensed into 12, according to Executive Director Paula Wheeler. The confusion of classes and equipment did little to diminish the enthusiasm volunteers have for the program.

Barlow was among them. Born with spina bifida, Barlow took up skiing four years ago at the urging of his sister and a neighbor. He recalled that the scariest moment with the new sport was mounting the chairlift. The way he manipulates a bar to elevate his mono-ski to the heighth of the lift demonstrates his finesse with the equipment and the level of independence it allows him on the slopes. He sits atop a single ski in a molded seat and propels himself with outriggers.

The operation of a mono-ski requires upper body strength and mobility. Wheeler said, and is not the choice for everyone with a lower body disability. Having mastered the device, Barlow is now more than 280 volunteers who train others to ski with adaptive equipment. He owns his own mono-ski and skis up to three times a week at the resort.

Volunteers are asked to commit to two days of training and 10 days of assistance through the season. For their efforts, Sunday River provides a free lift ticket for each day they participate.

“Some come for the free lift ticket in the beginning,” Wheeler said. “But seeing the success of working with one student, they often forget that pass.”

Charlie Bederian of Wells is an enthusiastic volunteer.

“This is more than recreation,” he said. “You just don’t know what the human spirit is capable of until you see these kids.”

He vividly recalls one of his first sessions at MHS. Waiting on the deck of the lodge, he saw a woman in tears. When he asked her what was wrong, he remembers the pride in her voice as she pointed to a beginning skier on the slope. “That’s my son,” she told Bederian.

Information packets from MHS are filled with similar tales and testimonials. Parents and volunteers eagerly tell of their first experiences and successes with the program.

One such story is about 6-year-old Darren, a regular at MHS, whose parents questioned their decision in puting their disabled and walker-bound son on skis.

With Darren moving down the slope for the first time on skis and immediately crying to “do it again, do it again,” the parents’ questions were answered. The experience, they said, offers Darren a place to go where he is known for who he is and what he can do and not for his disability.

For Terri Gordon, an adult four-tracker who uses two skis and crutches with outriggers, skiing provides, “more freedom than I had ever felt in my entire life, and when I was on my skis I did not feel disabled anymore.”

Gordon also observed that skiing “breaks down barriers that society may have about people with disabilities.”

Bederian is known for forgetting that his students have handicaps once they have mastered the slopes. While adaptive equipment, and snowmobile shuttles, are used to get the participants on the slopes and around the resort, Bederian laughs about the times he and his charges have used the resort’s conventional transportation to return to the MHS lodge.

Skiing is traditionally considered an expensive and elite sport. But the beauty of Maine Handicapped Skiing, according to Wheeler, is the program is free to anyone with a handicap. Underwritten by Sunday River with its offering of lift tickets for volunteer and students, the program hosts an annual ski-a-thon in March that raises more than $250,000 for the program.

It is “the best time in the whole country in one day,” according to Bederian.

His volunteer service with Sunday River began after participation with a team in a March ski-a-thon. He eventually lobbied his employer, Tom’s of Maine, to let him use his volunteer release-time, 5 percent of his work time, to help at MHS. Last year, four five-man teams from Tom’s participated in the annual fundraiser, he said. More than 100 teams take part each year.

Programs such as MHS are likely to grow because of the Americans Disabilities Act, Wheeler said. Currently, MHS is the only program of its kind in the Northeast. It offers equipment for rent or purchase that can be used elsewhere. But Sunday River is the only place in Maine with the equipment and necessary training.

Some Maine ski facilities have sent people to be trianed by the MHS staff, but few have made attempts to duplicate what Sunday River offers. Also, MHS staff members frequently travel to larger slopes around the country to discuss adaptive ski programs.

“The most important thing Sunday River does here is it changes lives and opens doors,” Wheeler said. “It’s something people (with disabilities) could not afford to do on thier own. But with our program, there’s no reason not to participate, and they learn they can do something they never thought they could or would do, regardless of how or when their handicap began.”

“Here they can gain a level of independence and leave their disability behind,” she said. “If people just come and see, they’ll believe.”

Some of the MHS events for 1995 include: Blind-Visually Impaired Ski Day, Sunday, Feb. 26; 10th Anniversary Ski-a-thon, Sunday, March 18; Volunteer Appreciation Bash, Sunday, April 2; Open House Columbus Day Weekend.

More information about Maine Handicapped Skiing is available by calling: 207-824-2440 or writing MHS, RR2 Box 1971, Bethel, Me., 04217.