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My Time with CADS

Always a Great Day on the Slopes

When I explain CADS I'll often joke, "I could poke out one of your eyes, chop off your arms and one of your legs, and still show you a great day on the slopes." It's true. The amazing thing about adaptive skiing is how truly adaptive it really is. Besides missing limbs, there are blind skiers, paraplegics, quadriplegics, kids with Down syndrome, autism, cerebral palsy—you name it—and you'll find them all out there at your local ski hill having the time of their lives. In fact, paralympic skiers are much better downhillers than you and I will ever be.

The 14 years I volunteered with CADS-NCD at Edelweiss were rich and rewarding in so many ways. Not only did I gain new insights into various disabilities, I was inspired in ways I never would have imagined. Perhaps my biggest lesson was realizing the term "disability" only described my own ignorance towards persons with special needs and the incredible families who are blessed to have them.

Autism Eye-Opener

My first season with CADS I was paired with Patrice, an autistic teenager and given a mission to help improve his skiing. Although I'd heard the word before, I had no idea what autism was or how incredibly routinized the behavioral patterns could be.

For example, at the start of each run Patrice would repeat the same little clothing and strap adjustments, sit on the same side of the chair, do a few more adjustments at the top, then head down the exact same route. When I say exact, as Patrick kept stopping at the same spot half way down to ponder something for a moment, I stealthily tossed a dime on the snow two feet from where his right ski was parked. Honest to God, next run down he stopped about two inches from that dime. It was freaky.

Continuously working different angles, I finally found the way to get Patrice to try other runs and begin improving his technique. Using this theme of repetition, I introduced a new routine on the chair. Each ride up, I started repeating a made-up story about a crazy dream I had about Patrice where he always tried something new at the end. Using an accelerating story-telling rhythm to kindle excitement and laughter, Patrice and I began charging off the chairlift at the top to fulfill the vision of the dream. Freeing him from his first routine made him wide open to everything new. It was an amazing breakthrough for the both of us.

Mach-9 Maniac

As the season went on, each weekend I'd watch other CADS volunteers piloting sit-skis, which are basically wheelchairs with skis and hydraulic suspension. It looked technical and challenging so I wanted to try. Expressing my interest, three quarters way through the season Patrick was re-assigned to a new volunteer, and I was paired with a sitskiing 21 year-old, paraplegic wheelchair sprinting champion who used retracting outrigger ski poles to board the chairlift all on his own.

Young, strong, and dangerously fearless, this young man was absolutely hell bent on trying to create a sonic boom by tearing straight down the steepest runs at mach-9. With no possible way to catch him, at terminal velocity he would either catch an edge or smash into a mogul and wipe out in the most spectacular fashion imaginable. As ripped with muscles as he was, I honestly don't know how that kid didn't snap his own neck during some of those 80 km barrel rolls. As his pile of broken equipment steadily grew, at season's end he was asked to leave the program and never return.

The Gomez Brothers

Reporting for sitski training at the start of season two, I was assigned the Gomez brothers, a pair of 200 pounders from warm, sunny Spain who had suffered jackknife spinal injuries in some horrific car crash that had killed their parents and left them both with what everyone assumed was extensive brain damage.

Each Sunday as they were wheeled into the toasty lodge by a Swiss handler hired by the estate who was a strong advocate for the benefits of fresh air, loud moans of "Nnnnooooooo!!!" would erupt as the Gomez's were steered back out into the freezing cold to be strapped into their sitskis. Being from sunny Spain and all, the Gomez brothers weren't big fans of winter in general.

At the top and eager for my first sitski tethering lesson, my trainer Chris just handed me the reigns and said, "Go for it." "Are you serious?” I asked, “Shouldn't I try this with giant bag of potatoes or something first?" Apparently not. So pushing off I crashed hard on my very first turn. With great trepidation, I heaved the Gomez back upright and continued mopping the hill with him all day until I finally started to get the hang of it.

That Gomez kid wasn't happy at all. In fact, both Gomez brothers just HATED every second of CADS. Those moaning “Nnnnooooooo's” every 15 minutes were a real spirit crusher so my "do good soul" began to weaken. After protesting I was simply told to suck it up as I was the only volunteer big and strong enough to handle them. Deflated by the constant moans, I started hating CADS almost as much as the Gomez's. Sunday morning comes bright and early on the heals of a good Saturday night and getting up to volunteer was already hard enough. My only saving grace was the warm sun hitting my face on those chair rides up. It's nature’s hangover medicine.

Lucky for everyone, divine intervention struck a few weeks later. After a long morning of whiplash moguls (sometimes I thought heads would pop off torsos), as we came to a full stop at the bottom in front of the Swiss guy for lunch break, to everyone’s amazement, my Gomez kid suddenly cranks himself completely around in his sitski, looks me straight in the eye and yells, "NO MORE!!" with perfect clarity. Apparently, since this was by far the most mobility and greatest number of consecutive words displayed since the big crash, much to everyone’s relief, the Gomez brothers time with CADS ended right there on the spot. Hallelujah!

Rocket Robbie

Free now to reboot my joy with CADS, I made the play for "Rocket Robbie", a 12 year-old lightweight enrolled in the program along with his 14 year-old sister. Both of their spines had been severed the year before from lap-belt jackknife injuries sustained in a car crash with their dad at the wheel. A school ski trip was on the calendar and dad (who suffered no permanent injury in the crash) was damned if his kids were going to be left behind.

When he wasn't playing spotter, their dad tried his best to learn how to tether and sitski himself. In the weeks that followed, we helped the kids use outrigger poles to become proficient sitskiers while we tethered to control speed and direction. When the school ski trip finally arrived, CADS sent volunteers and equipment to ensure they enjoyed that day on the slopes with their peers.

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My Superhero

Le Champion

When I first met Marc-Antoine Fleury (or M.A. as he is known), a non-verbal 10-year old with spastic/ataxic cerebral palsy, my ignorant heart went out to this kid and his father who lugged him out of the van every Sunday into his wheelchair, then out of the wheelchair into his sitski, before strapping him down and handing him over to me. There to serve, I embraced a mistaken role of helping a burdened father and his broken child. Nothing could have been farther from reality.

Misreading my new friend completely, I had no idea that Marc-Antoine's cerebral palsy had simply trapped an incredibly sharp mind inside of an uncooperative body. However, as my CADS partner Roger and I exchanged lurid jokes on the chairlift, it quickly became obvious this kid between us understood every word. After a little time playing the 'yes' and 'no' game, we learned he typed with his feet, went to regular school, was a die-hard Buffalo Bills fan, and thought the course safety guy was a bit of a nimrod.

Misreading my new friend completely, I had no idea that Marc-Antoine's cerebral palsy had trapped an incredibly sharp mind inside of an uncooperative body. As my CADS partner Roger and I exchanged lurid jokes on the chairlift, it quickly became obvious this kid between us understood every word. After a little time playing the 'yes' and 'no' game, we learned he typed with his feet, went to regular school, was a die-hard Buffalo Bills fan, and thought the course safety guy was a bit of a nimrod.

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Skillswise, my first season with M.A. was focused on mastering the art of totally controlling a sitski without any help from the occupant. Each Sunday Roger and I would take turns at the helm, freeriding along to hone our tethering skills. When M.A. and I had our first big wipe out, my initial horror was quickly extinguished when I discovered him laughing hysterically. It made me think—when we were ten, all we wanted to do was flip our toboggans, fly off swings or throw ourselves from rooftops onto snowbanks—anything to enjoy a good wipe out. That's how you play when you're ten so in this respect CADS freed Marc-Antoine to enjoy being a regular kid. As our relationship progressed, so did my sensitivity to how M.A. was treated by the general population. Wheeling him in and through the crowds at lunch, strangers assumed he was "retarded" or something before looking at me to ask what he needed. This was his world. M.A. knew exactly what was going on but never seemed bothered by their ignorance. The more I saw and the more I learned, his amazing attitude filled me with respect. Nearing the end of our first season together, we signed up for the "Ski-A-Thon", an annual fundraiser where you collect pledges for each run completed that day. On race day we absolutely crushed the competition with 25 runs—a target number which coincided with the 25th anniversary of CADS. At the big victory presentation, Marc-Antoine was officially crowned "Le Champion".

IT SPEAKS

With my tethering skills now rock solid, to break the tedium of repeating the same beginner run over and over (the only run we were allowed on), I began taking great delight in trying to scare the crap of Le Champion. Just for fun, I'd wind up the tethers, grab the back of the bucket, and steer us madly towards the edge of the woods or other dangers only to turn away sharply at the last possible second. He loved it so after that—to growing protests from the CADS safety nimrod—we began hitting small moguls here and there to catch a little air time.

One morning, strong as an ox from weight training madly for a big ski trip to Whistler, with both hands on the back of the bucket, we began hitting this perfect mogul faster and faster until we hit it full speed. Going airborne to about my head level, I held M.A. up in the air as long as humanly possible. 30 meters or so later we crashed back down to earth so hard he bounced back up but I muscled control, finished the run, and we scooted through an empty chair lift line to load immediately.

While Roger and laughed and began high-fiving this crazy maneuver, Marc-Antoine was rocking side to side, making high-pitched squeals before he finally burst and yelled, "Incroyable" (incredible) in perfectly clear French. "Oh my God," said Roger, "IT SPEAKS." Imagine that. We all just laughed and laughed.

As the season came to an end, Marc-Antoine once again retained the title of Le Champion by winning our second Ski-A-Thon with 26 runs in the allotted 4 hours.

Le Terroriste

As season three began, seeing how Marc-Antoine had limited but definite ability to tilt his head from side to side, The new deal was from this moment on he was now officially steering. Whichever way he tilted his head would be the way we would turn. No head tilt, no turn. True to my decree, M.A. then spent many terrifying moments smacking into snow fences, driving into the woods, or running over packs of helpless small children. “Le Champion” was quickly rebranded "Le Terroriste".

With life and death now a clear feature of each run, he began to tilt that little head of his without fail. Not only did M.A. display a real gift for picking intelligent lines that avoided downhill traffic, anytime he was perfectly upright and unweighted, his leaning head tilt actually turned the sitski (5% of his turns). Things quickly became hairy when I would get set to turn us left and M.A. would suddenly shoot us right. If high-speed gymnastics to prevent a spill wasn't enough, we had now become a hazard for cutting off faster downhill traffic. A new rule was then made for M.A. to shoulder-check first before signalling any change in direction.

We really enjoyed this new dynamic as M.A. blossomed into this new role of flight director. We also won the Ski-A-Thon again that year with 23 runs, only this time during a huge snowstorm which was only made possible by Roger and I figuring out how to exchange the tethers during the chair ride up instead of doing it at the top of the hill. Le Terroriste was now a three time champion but Roger, now 65, decided to retire so it was just M.A. and I from this point on.

The Miracle

Season four began with the most incredible surprise imaginable. Now 15 years of age, M.A. had grown a foot over the summer and gained significant weight. Cramming his long spaghetti body into his regular junior sitski for the first run of the season, after strapping him in we jammed his helmet onto that big mellon head.

At the top and on our way, when Marc-Antoine tilted that big mellon head of his left, the sitski turned left, and when he tilted that big mellon head of his right, the sitski turned right. I couldn't believe it. Two big mellon head turns later I slammed on the brakes, tripped in my excitement as I scrambled in front of M.A. on my knees and yelled, "THAT WAS ALL YOU! I DIDN'T DO ANYTHING. YOU JUST TURNED FOUR TIMES ALL BY YOURSELF! I CAN'T BELIEVE IT!" Our eyes locked like big saucers as the gravity of this total fluke of circumstance dawned upon us.

So off we went with Marc-Antoine shoulder-checking then turning with me stabilizing him every step of the way. His head tilt gave him about 20% control which was meant he actually now skiing for real. As his timing and sense of balance progressed, so did his and my control. Through an accidental miracle of circumstance we had become one symbiotic unit of control with checks and balances that worked brilliantly.

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THE STORY CONTINUES • MORE TO COME

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Volunteer With CADS

CADS need volunteers! CLICK HERE to learn more about volunteering with CADS at your local ski hill this winter.

Matt Stepchuk and Marc-Antoine Fleury enjoyed tearing up the slopes together for 11 years thanks to the CADS program at Edelweiss Valley.