Pod Insights National Park After Dark Access to Adventure: Accessibility in National Parks About this episode We hear “the outdoors are for everyone” a lot, and while that is true, accessibility to the outdoors is not always created equal. Today’s episode is dedicated to two remarkable stories of people with disabilities reaching for history in National Parks. A group of paraplegic hikers who set out to climb Guadalupe Peak in wheelchairs and two kayakers who paddled through the Grand Canyon—facing some of the hardest whitewater in the world—completely blind.
Documentaries: Assault on the Mountain, The Weight of Water, Blink, Wampler’s Ascent
Books: No Barriers: A Blind Man's Journey to Kayak the Grand Canyon by Buddy Levy and Erik Weihenmayer
Touch the Top of the World by Erik Weihenmayer
Podcasts: No Barriers
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Transcript 12,056 words · 4 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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0:32 Speaker 01 Into the wild, the Cartier Panther encounters a shimmering crocodile, a lonely lovebird, a breathless zebra, and a restless tiger.
0:48 Danielle LaRock? In September of 1937, as the Larches turned golden, President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed the nation from the Two Medicine Chalet in Glacier National Park, saying in part, "Today, for the first time in my life, I have seen Glacier Park. Perhaps I can best express to you my thrill and delight by saying that I wish every American, young and old, could have been with me today. The Great Mountains, the glaciers, the lakes, and the trees make me long to stay here for the rest of the summer. I hope that each and every one of you who can possibly find the means and opportunity will visit our national parks." In the nearly 90 years since that address, millions of Americans have taken Roosevelt's advice, finding landscapes that capture the imagination
1:32 Danielle LaRock? and test physical fitness. National parks have become synonymous with outdoor adventure sports: climbing, rafting, backpacking miles from cell service, or even trails. These activities offer a chance for a challenge, a way to connect with nature, and an escape from busy everyday life. During his presidency, FDR visited a lot of parks. There are pictures of him watching Old Faithful in Yellowstone, touring Yosemite Valley, and arriving to formally dedicate Shenandoah. In the pictures of these visits, you see a man who found meaning in our parks and who believed they are worth protecting. You might also notice that in In all of those photos, he's riding in a car.
2:13 Danielle LaRock? After contracting polio at age thirty-nine, FDR lost the use of his legs. As an adult, he used mobility aids to navigate the world. Wheelchairs, leg braces, custom ramps to enter and exit his vehicle, and horseback riding. He remains one of the most prominent figures in world history with a disability, but he is far from alone. According to CDAC data published in 2024, one in every four American adults has some form of disability. Physical conditions that make it difficult to walk or climb stairs, vision loss, hearing loss, or cognitive disabilities. People for whom daily life can feel like a challenge to overcome. People whose experience in national parks, like Roosevelt's, are often limited to what you can see from a road.
2:58 Danielle LaRock? For example, Glacier National Park is celebrated as a hiker's paradise and lists over seven hundred miles of hiking trails on their website. Just two of those miles are advertised as accessible, flat and wide enough for an average wheelchair user to navigate. To some extent, this is unavoidable. No one wants to pave trails up every mountainside or crisscross the wilderness with boardwalks. And progress has been made, slowly but surely, in lowering the barriers to access in our parks. But some people refuse to wait for progress and refuse to accept a narrow worldview of what people with disabilities are capable of. Faced with a life-changing diagnosis, they set out to do the impossible.
3:42 Danielle LaRock? Welcome to National Park After Dark.
4:04 Danielle LaRock? Hello, everybody. I'm Cassie. And I'm Danielle. And I'm really excited for this episode. This has been one
4:10 Cassandra Yahnian? That people have been requesting for a long time, but is also one that I have been looking forward to for a really long time.
4:16 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, it's a completely new world. I'm so excited to talk to you about some. Okay, so I'm gonna hand it myself. There are two stories that we're gonna cover in today's episode. Instead of like one big, long, in-depth story, we're gonna cover to touch on two stories that happened in different parks at different times. But I also have some recommendations at the end for even more stories to just like really immerse yourself in and get curious about because this is an episode I think that you're gonna particularly like because it's just like so harps on the human spirit and how incredible people can be. And that's your whole thing.
4:57 Cassandra Yahnian? I love human resilience and I also love one of, and probably from personal experience, but I love when doctors tell a person, you'll never be able to do this. You can't do this. And that person is like, watch me.
5:12 Danielle LaRock? Oh, yeah.
5:12 Cassandra Yahnian? And that's like, that's one of my favorite things. Um, so I'm excited to hear the story.
5:20 Danielle LaRock? Okay. Well, before we get into it, I have to tell you this. I didn't tell you beforehand. Usually we go over like, oh, do we have anything to touch on before we get into the episode? And I didn't tell you this because it's so funny. I have two updates.
5:34 Cassandra Yahnian? Okay.
5:34 Danielle LaRock? For us. Uh, the first is the OG foaming pants woman came forward.
5:42 Cassandra Yahnian? Did she?
5:43 Danielle LaRock? Yes.
5:45 Cassandra Yahnian? She's revealed herself.
5:48 Danielle LaRock? And this is what she said. Hi, girls. Listening to the five-year recap and I am so excited to hear your shout out to my Trail Tales story. WTF Pants. So I guess that was the original.
5:59 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah.
6:00 Danielle LaRock? Okay. Hearing my story again was so fun. Hearing you two talk about your love for the story has me absolutely soaring and healing from the embarrassment as well. Feel free to reach out at any time. I actually just moved to the Boone area, pretty close to the scene of the crime. Not sure how to prove it was me, other than to say that you shared the photos I gave you on your Instagram and you can cross check those with my own. And she tagged her Instagram for us. I'm pretty sure the same photo is there too. Y'all are truly the absolute best and your pod has spent such a light in my life that continues to get better with each year. Keep it up.
6:33 Cassandra Yahnian? Our icon. It's good to hear from you.
6:38 Danielle LaRock? And then the other update, which I forget when we made fun of this. It was relatively recently. I just forget which episode it was in, but when we were giving people crap about misidentifying wildlife, particularly mountain lions, and I called out somebody in Manchester who posted a picture of like a bobcat that was clearly a bobcat.
7:05 Cassandra Yahnian? Did they come forward?
7:06 Danielle LaRock? They sure did.
7:09 Cassandra Yahnian? That's so funny.
7:11 Danielle LaRock? Okay, this is it. It says, hey NPAD team, I just listened to your Yellowstone, oh, the Yellowstone episode. I don't know which one that was. Oh, was it your survival? Your most recent survival?
7:22 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah, I think so.
7:23 Danielle LaRock? One that we were, yeah, it must have been it. Okay. I just listened to your episode, episode, and had to laugh because in all caps, I'm the bobcat guy from Manchester, New Hampshire. AKA, I reported a bobcat thinking it was a mountain lion. I'd love to tell you the whole story. I actually wrote an entire stand-up skit about it and the backlash from wildlife enthusiasts that came after it. If you want me to email it to you, please let me know. I definitely learned my lesson. Anyway, keep up the good work. Yellowstone is incredible. Just went there for the first time this past June. Take care. Keith, big cat, Rono. Isn't that so funny?
8:03 Cassandra Yahnian? What a small world. What a small world.
8:08 Danielle LaRock? And he's a good sport about it. Clearly, he wrote a whole.
8:11 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah.
8:12 Danielle LaRock? Stand-up people are built different. They know how to take a ribbing and.
8:16 Cassandra Yahnian? Sometimes you just have to laugh at yourself.
8:18 Danielle LaRock? Truly. Yeah. So, thank you, Keith, big cat. Big cat Keith.
8:26 Danielle LaRock? And yeah, so I guess there might be a follow up of that because I emailed him back. I'm like, please send us the stand up. We'd love to see it. Okay, so those are just some two quick little updates in our world. But let's get on to the episode. So like I mentioned, these are going to be two shorter stories. They are both remarkable and quite different and set in two different national parks. And they're all about people with disabilities reaching for history within those parks. And the first is going to center around a group of paraplegic hikers who set out to climb Guadalupe Peak, which is the tallest mountain in all of Texas. And they did so in wheelchairs. And then the second is about kayakers who attempted to paddle 227 miles through the Grand Canyon.
9:11 Danielle LaRock? Of course, we've covered the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River running through it a number of times. And so from all of that, we kind of know how tressen difficult those conditions can be. And they did so completely blind.
9:27 Cassandra Yahnian? So Very cool.
9:28 Danielle LaRock? Let's get started and we'll go to Texas first because we haven't been to this park yet.
9:33 Cassandra Yahnian? Amazing.
9:41 Danielle LaRock? Located in West Texas, just south of Carlsbad, the Guadalupe Mountains, after which the park, established in 1972, was named, are a geological wonder. Towering 8,000 feet above sprawling deserts and sand dunes, the mountains themselves are made of ancient reefs. Over 200 million years old, an enormous reef made of sponges, algae, and microbial life thrived in a tropical sea. And over time, the sea dried up and the reefs turned to fossil. Millions of years later, the tropical climate became a desert and tectonic forces pushed and compressed the fossil reefs up and up and up to become the tallest mountains in Texas and Guadalupe Mountains National Park. At 8,749 feet tall, Guadalupe Peak is the high point.
10:25 Danielle LaRock? And in 1982, a group of six men gazed upwards to its peak and decided they wanted to climb it. That alone is not uncommon. Thousands of People hike to what is known as the top of Texas every year. But this group of men, like I mentioned, were all in wheelchairs. They were part of a group called POINT, which stands for paraplegics on independent nature trips. Each man had lost the use of his legs and some had lost their lower legs entirely. For Shorty Powers, it was a car accident at the age of seventeen. For Joe Moss, it was Vietnam. The men had come together over a shared love of the outdoors. And while POINT had organized rafting and backpacking trips before, Guadalupe Peak was by far their biggest obstacle to date.
11:10 Danielle LaRock? The trail to the summit runs about 4.2 miles and climbs 3,000 feet of elevation. It is a strenuous hike for anyone, let alone wheelchair users. It is steep, rocky, and narrow. On their climb, there would be no pavement, no handrails, and POINT was adamant about this. No assistance. They were like, we want to do this on our own.
11:31 Cassandra Yahnian? Ourselves.
11:32 Danielle LaRock? Yep. They wanted to conquer this thing completely on their own, to carry their own supplies and push themselves forward with their own strength and force of will. Park officials had some concerns about the safety of the expedition, fearing that the men could wind up hurt or even worse on the treacherous climb. But a young ranger named Jonathan Jarvis signed off on the project, agreeing to their terms of an unsupported expedition with one concession. He'd bring them water as they went. It's like, oh, just let me hand you some water, okay?
12:04 Danielle LaRock? And if you want to see footage of the story, actually, there's, it's super short and it's very 1980s style because of course this happened in the 1980s, but just the way it's filmed and the whole vibe of it. But there's a short documentary on YouTube called Assault on a Mountain. And it's free. You can watch it. And there, it's just kind of like short clips of it instead of a full-length feature documentary. But it's cool to see.
12:27 Cassandra Yahnian? Gotcha.
12:28 Danielle LaRock? Yeah. In it, you see the men huddled together for a photo op just after dawn, right before they set off to begin the trail. Pretty unforgivingly, the steepest parts of this trail happen pretty much right off the bat. A mile and a half climb up loose rocks and stone steps with no shade to protect you from the punishing desert Texas sun.
12:46 Cassandra Yahnian? Can I ask?
12:47 Danielle LaRock? Yeah.
12:47 Cassandra Yahnian? Um, just really quick, and this is in the eighties, so I'm assuming not. Now I see a lot where there are the electric wheelchairs that have the crazy off-roading wheels and you can go over stuff. Are they climbing this with their arm strength and?
13:03 Danielle LaRock? Yes.
13:04 Cassandra Yahnian? And doing this all, okay.
13:06 Danielle LaRock? There is no like e-bike sort of assistance, you know, with now there's like electrical powered, um, different types of technology and things like that for not only recreational bikes and things like that, but for wheelchairs and stuff. No, this is all hand arm powered.
13:25 Cassandra Yahnian? Gotcha. Wow. Incredible.
13:27 Danielle LaRock? It's incredible. Yeah. And of course, kind of as an ode to our one star review episode we did a couple of months ago. There are some reviewers online that leave reviews about this trail. Uh, and some of the comments include it's dusty, stupidly long for just 3,000 feet in elevation gain and it has a lot of erosion. So people are like, not very happy about this.
13:53 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah, not great trail conditions.
13:56 Danielle LaRock? The point crew tackled all of those things with the help of specially designed wheelchairs. While they didn't quite have the wide tires of modern day fat bikes, kind of like you were alluding to a little bit, their chairs were designed with wider front wheels, main tires that balance grip with puncture resistance and special compartments under the seat for storing their gear. So while they weren't powered in any sort of way, which I think is what you were.
14:20 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah, I was asking if it was, but it, they were fitted to go over better terrain.
14:26 Danielle LaRock? Yes.
14:27 Cassandra Yahnian? Just like the skinny wheels that you see.
14:30 Danielle LaRock? But like, it's kind of like a, it's hard to explain without seeing it visually, but it was kind of an in-between of the standard wheelchair, like hospital wheelchair that you're probably imagining, and like a fully decked out fat tire bike wheel. Like, it's kind of in the middle.
14:47 Cassandra Yahnian? Okay.
14:48 Danielle LaRock? Do you know what I mean?
14:49 Cassandra Yahnian? It makes sense to have way better tires because you're not going to make it very far over really rough terrain with tires that can't.
14:56 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, they, exactly. Yeah. So they, they prepped for it. They didn't just say like, oh, we're going straight up there. They clearly prepared.
15:04 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah. My biggest question was if they were powering this with their own arms, which they are, which is
15:09 Danielle LaRock? Right, yeah.
15:10 Cassandra Yahnian? incredible. I'm picturing a bunch of Popeyes going up like, just absolutely ripped.
15:21 Danielle LaRock? So like I said, they were prepared for this trek and they actually prepared for it to take at least a few days. You know, this is something that they knew was going to take them quite a bit of time. So they carried rain gear, camp stoves, sleeping bags, and everything else you would need to go backpacking. Some of them tied excess gear to their chairs over their shins. David Kylie was part of this expedition and he helped to design their chairs. In the first footage shown of the team on the trail, you see him carefully descending a steep section, leaning back in his chair as if he was holding a wheelie on a bike. The large tires helped to grip the loose gravel and roll over big rocks, all while balancing him upright until he hit a snag and tumbled forward to the ground. When Kylie was in high school, he sustained a spinal cord injury.
16:06 Danielle LaRock? On a winter trip, he went inner tubing and slammed into a tree, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. Afterwards, he found a community in wheelchair basketball leagues, and in time, he moved his chair around like an extension of his own body. You can see that skill clearly in the footage from the climb. His tumble from the chair was remarkably controlled, and once on the ground, he expertly swung the chair around his head and lowered it down through the rocky section that tripped him up, scooting along on the ground on his butt before hopping back onto the seat. This strategy of getting as far as you could in your chair before making a controlled exit was critical. Some sections of the trail were impossible to navigate on wheels and they carried foam pads to sit and scoot for this exact reason.
16:47 Danielle LaRock? But more often than not, the men stayed in their chairs, developing solutions to their common obstacles. Stairs that were built into the trail to help hikers and fight erosion were a constant hurdle that they overcame with teamwork. Pushing each other over and around the steps or whatever else got in their way. When their tires were unable to grip the loose gravel, they'd wedge fabric or large rocks under the wheels to regain traction, just like you would use a floor mat or something underneath your tire if it got stuck in snow. And while a tired hiker could simply stop and catch their breath, the point crew weren't so lucky. One slip of the hand or lapse in judgment and their wheelchairs could carry them over a cliff. Well-placed rocks frequently acted as a sort of emergency brake to keep their chairs in place,
17:30 Danielle LaRock? letting them take much-needed breaks during steep sections. They made steady progress, but the climb was grueling. Kylie later said of it, "It was the most difficult mobility I've ever faced, just in terms of physical exertion, it's in a world of its own." Before the climb even started, one of their members had to bow out due to a kidney infection. And by the end of day one, Shorty Powers threw in the towel as well. Muscle spasms that started in his fingers had spread to his chest during the climb and he felt it best to not continue forward. After a full day on the trail, the men made it 1.75 miles and made camp. There is only one designated campground about halfway up, the mountain, but they got special permission to stay right alongside the trail.
18:14 Danielle LaRock? Of course, they were in talks with Jarvis and all of that to make this happen and they just like had to pull right over and be like, "That was exhausting." The cramps, your hands must feel.
18:28 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah.
18:29 Danielle LaRock? Just going like gripping something for so long, you know? And the other thing I wanted to talk, why I wanted to do this episode now is because As of, you know, I would say a week ago or so now that we're recording this, Alex Honnold just, you know, scaled the building in Taipei, which was incredible and amazing to watch. And it was like, he is
18:52 Cassandra Yahnian? stressed me out so much. Meanwhile, he didn't have a care in the world and I'm sweating. My whole body thinks I'm the one climbing and he's just vibing, listening to his music.
19:02 Danielle LaRock? I kept like looking away.
19:04 Cassandra Yahnian? Time.
19:06 Danielle LaRock? I had it on and I watched the whole thing, but I did look down and or put it on mute every once in a while because first of all, the commentators were pissing me off. And I know it's their job to like reiterate things and talk to the audience as if they don't know what free soloing is or who Alex Honnold is, but it was kind of, it felt like mansplaining. It's like, do you know what he's already accomplished? Like this is incredible, but this is
19:34 Cassandra Yahnian? It was just a little much. Whenever you wanted to hear what Alex was saying while he was climbing, because he would speak occasionally, the commentators were speaking over him and you couldn't hear anything. And those were the moments. Everything else I was fine with, but those moments where Alex was speaking and they were speaking over him. I'm like, no, stop, stop talking. I want to hear what he's saying. What is he? What is he thinking up there right now? And so that was my, my gripe with that.
19:59 Danielle LaRock? Yeah. I forget what I was saying about that. We just, oh yeah. The reason I wanted to do this episode in the wake of, you know, a big moment like that is because we see these incredible feats of athleticism and, you know, he's a superhuman. Those pull ups he was doing.
20:16 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah. When he's like, yeah, after 300 reps, my arms get a little tired. I was like, what do you mean 300?
20:23 Danielle LaRock? Pull ups. He's just holding on, like gripping the sides of the squat rack or climb rack or whatever.
20:29 Cassandra Yahnian? I know.
20:30 Danielle LaRock? Yeah. So anyway, I think that's where my brain was going.
20:33 Cassandra Yahnian? I could do like one of those maybe. And he's like, after 300, my My arms get a little tired.
20:40 Danielle LaRock? I would put my life on, I can't even do one. Hold it the way that he was holding those. You're not grabbing and holding on and pulling it yourself up like that. You're literally just gripping.
20:51 Cassandra Yahnian? Pulling it like this way.
20:53 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, there's no way. I would bet every penny I have that I could not do one of those. But anyways, it was the reason that like my brain connected those things, that image of him gripping those poles while thinking of this story. And I just think that we give a lot of flowers to people like Alex Honnold who deserve them. But it's kind of like all our focus is on people like that when there are so many stories of people with disabilities who overcome amazing things just like that all of the time and just don't get as much attention. And I think that's why I was like really wanting to do this episode around kind of
21:38 Danielle LaRock? a flurry of activity around Alex Honnold because people, it's in their minds, you know, of like that is incredible to watch.
21:46 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah.
21:46 Danielle LaRock? You know?
21:54 Danielle LaRock? Anyways, okay, back to the story. So they're in their camp on the side of the trail and they conk out for the night. They're obviously extremely tired. Their arms are probably like noodles. They have blistered hands, but they were in really high spirits. I mean, they had accomplished a lot. 1.7 miles in that terrain in wheelchairs and scooting along on their butts in that Texas sun. That's something to celebrate. So they climbed into their sleeping bags, took a hard earned rest before the beginning of day two. In 1920, British mountaineer George Mallory was asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, and his answer was pretty simple. Because it's there.
22:38 Danielle LaRock? So why was it that the point crew wanted to climb Guadalupe Peak? It all started with Shorni Powers. He had a lifelong love of nature, was incredible. Outgoing and built a large network of friends through wheelchair basketball leagues. He started Point to empower people with disabilities through outdoor experiences. And as Point gained momentum, the group became part of a growing disability rights movement. Through backpacking and whitewater rafting, activities typically seen as too hard, too impractical, or too dangerous for disabled people. Point challenged stereotypes about disability. One of the climbers in the group heading to Guadalupe Peak was Don Rogers. Rogers was paralyzed at the age of 21 in a motorcycle accident, an event that would change his world forever.
23:23 Danielle LaRock? Suddenly relying on a wheelchair to get around, his plans to go to dental school were blown up, and he feared the isolation and stigma that wheelchair users often experience. Worst of all, his doctors told him he might not have long to live. But he soon met Shorty Powers and a whole community of wheelchair users. He found new direction in life and a new perspective on his own disability. When asked about their Guadalupe climb, Rogers said, "We wanted to be able to demonstrate what was possible. Not just talk about it, we wanted to get out and show people." And that's exactly what they did. Even as Shorty Powers returned to the parking lot on the start of day two, the climb was getting national media attention. Scenes from the expedition appeared on the nightly news across the country,
24:06 Danielle LaRock? and one of the climbers' girlfriends said her phone was ringing off the hook from people wanting quotes and wanting information and just any sort of in to what was going on with the group. But all of the publicity they got was happening off of the mountain, largely unknown to the hikers who still had a long way to go. Day one had some of the steepest sections of the whole trail. But even though day two wasn't as steep, the difficulty never let up. The team started out wearing matching blue and white long-sleeved shirts with the Point logo, but under the relentless summer sun, they ditched their long sleeves or shirts entirely to stay cool. Joe Moss, who lost his lower legs in Vietnam, wore a camo bucket hat. He used a headband over a bandana for sun protection,
24:47 Danielle LaRock? while Bobby Lee's wore a Yankees baseball cap and a T-shirt that said "Make Your Move." But anyone who's gone backpacking knows that with each day, even as you eat through a lot of your food. Your gear can start to feel heavier and heavier.
25:01 Cassandra Yahnian? Well, as you get tired and more and more tired, that weight can just feel more, even if it's getting less. I like to drink all my, I like when I'm like, well, my pack will get lighter as I drink more water. But then as you get more tired, it's harder to carry less.
25:18 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, your fatigue sets in and it's just, yeah, more difficult. Their custom wheelchairs were much lighter than standard wheelchairs at the time, but they still weighed several times more than a backpack carrying the same amount of equipment. To get up a 10 degree incline, each turn of the wheel required all of their arm strength and their entire core, a grueling and relentless task that took a clear physical toll. Throughout the day, Bobby Lee suffered from pain in his side, like a serious type of cramp. And while he gritted through that side pain, it was blisters that would spell the end of his run. The hand rims on their custom chairs, the parts of the wheel that of course you grab to push yourself forward, had been lined with BMX grips, sweat resistant and easier to hold.
26:01 Danielle LaRock? But after clenching those rims for over three miles by the end of day two, Lee's blisters made each turn of the wheels unbearable. So the team agreed to camp a little earlier than planned, spending one more night with Bobby before he went down the next day. The two men who had already bailed from the climb offered encouragement over a radio, cheering the three men who remained, Joe Moss, David Kiley and Don Rogers. In two days, they had covered two thirds of the mileage to the top, but their final bush held some of the trickiest terrain yet. Trail so narrow and rocky and for such great distances that they had to scoot along the ground and tow their chairs behind them with ropes. At one point, Rogers held the rope in his teeth to use both of his hands.
26:44 Cassandra Yahnian? Wow.
26:44 Danielle LaRock? Just absolutely muscling it up.
26:47 Cassandra Yahnian? It's like, we're doing this and I'm gonna, I'm gonna finagle away to make it happen, whatever that looks like.
26:53 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, and as they were going up higher and higher, the room for error got smaller. At one point, they reached a narrow section cut into a chalky white cliff. To their left, a rock wall, and to their right, a drop-off so sharp that it could make your stomach drop just watching it at home, speaking from personal experience. Um, I don't do well with heights. Any slip up and you're in a complete free fall. They passed through this section close together, one after the other, as if to provide a backboard if the man in front slipped backwards. The hike had always been hard, but as they went on, it started to feel really dangerous. On day four, the weather began to turn on them. A serious thunderstorm rolled in, sending chills down the men's spines.
27:36 Danielle LaRock? They sought shelter under a rocky overhang and made camp far from their wheelchairs to get away from the metal frames in case of a lightning strike, but their determination never wavered. Kylie said, "I've never been that close to the power of thunder echoing through those peaks. You know how small you were and how powerful Mother Nature was, but I was beyond the point of no return. You couldn't have dragged me off that mountain without getting to the top." All the while, the only support they had been getting was from that ranger, John Jarvis, bringing them water. Although Jarvis's wife Paula also smuggled them some baked goods and on one occasion, a six-pack, which they said were the best beers they ever had in their lives. As day five appeared, the sky cleared and the three men had their goal in sight.
28:20 Danielle LaRock? Faced with some of the steepest terrain yet, they used every trick they had developed to reach the finish line. And after a few demoralizing false summits, they finally made it. Eight thousand, seven hundred and forty-nine feet into the very top of Texas. In the documentary, you see the three men proudly embracing for a photo, congratulating each other with the phrase, "Power Plegic," before Rogers popped a bottle of champagne. Down at the trailhead, Shorty Powers and Bobby Lees celebrated with them over the radio. And the cameraman asked the men how they felt after this monumental accomplishment. Joe Moss said he couldn't explain the feeling. He said, "It's been thirteen years since I've worked with a team like this. If everybody would work together like this..."
29:02 Danielle LaRock? The world would be a better place. He wished that everyone could do what they did. And Don Rogers said, hey, man, I figure it took me five days to climb the tallest mountain in Texas. So the rest of my life, I can do anything that I want. Worried about the safety of a possible descent down the mountain because of course they were super nervous towards the end there. Even just getting up it, the park service actually called in a helicopter for a ride for them to get down the mountain and obviously down safely.
29:30 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah.
29:31 Danielle LaRock? National Guard helicopters landed right on the summit so the men could celebrate what they'd achieved without dreading the trip back down. And that's where the documentary Assault on a Mountain ends, celebrating the remarkable achievement of three determined adventurers as they soared into the sunset. But this five day climb, a journey that has never been replicated, by the way, left a long legacy. Climber David Kylie went on to become a decorated athlete. After thirteen Paralympic medals, he was inducted into the Olympic and Paralympic Hall of Fame in 2022. Don Rogers pursued a career in recreational therapy and as a celebrated professor at Indiana State University, advocated for universal design and outdoor recreation.
30:13 Danielle LaRock? And in 2009, the ranger who helped them on their journey, John Jarvis, became director of the National Park Service. And this is just, the ripple effects that happen in life are crazy. So while the climbers were struggling up the mountain, Jarvis remembered one of the men who stayed behind, led him through the park campground in his wheelchair, demonstrating right to him exactly how much harder it is for a wheelchair user to navigate these overlooked places. And unlike Guadalupe Peak, these campgrounds and public facilities are in the park service's control to design. Jarvis would later say, I think this is one of those linchpin events that changed a lot of perspectives.
30:56 Danielle LaRock? They were there to prove something. They showed that it wasn't a disability, but a different ability. Eight years after the climb, Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act, establishing new accessibility requirements for public facilities, including those in national parks. And during his eight year tenure- As National Park Service Director, Jarvis worked to ensure the agency met both the letter and intent of the law. While this was not their achievement alone, the point crew helped make that possible. David Kylie said it best, with that climb, they etched their wheel prints into history. So because of that interaction that Jarvis had with members of the point team that day, or that stretch of days, he really saw firsthand from a friend,
31:40 Danielle LaRock? like, hey, take a look around at what you typically see in a campground or just getting around a park. Now watch through my eyes and my ability and what can we do to make this better?
31:53 Cassandra Yahnian? Just gave him a totally different perspective of something that he may be even never even considered before.
31:59 Danielle LaRock? Absolutely. And kind of as like, that's kind of where we're going to leave the Guadalupe story. And before we transition into our next story in the Grand Canyon, just as like a little bit of an intermission between the two, I just want to briefly touch on how the National Park Service progressed on accessibility over the years. The agency's early years are summed up pretty well in an early 1970s handbook titled National Park Guide for the Handicapped. And it was the first of its kind. The booklet offers brief descriptions of hundreds of different park sites throughout the National Park system and provides information on accommodations for mobility access
32:38 Danielle LaRock? and notable obstacles that somebody with a disability might face in these different types of public facilities. And as you're reading it, if you feel compelled to read this 1971 handbook, you might find one phrase that's repeated over and over again. And that is access with assistance or by request, meaning that you could get into a building if you asked a staff person for a ramp. You could get over a curb to the bathroom if someone physically lifted you up. Accessibility was an afterthought that put the burden on visitors with disabilities. And this was the experience John Jarvis witnessed while exploring the Guadalupe Mountains campground with his friend who happened to be a wheelchair user.
33:23 Danielle LaRock? At first, in the seventies, the Park Service clearly acknowledged people with disabilities as visitors, but they're like, yeah, it's accessible. You just need help. You just need somebody else to.
33:34 Cassandra Yahnian? It wasn't a priority. It sounds like for them, it was like, yeah, we can assist you if you need it. Just ask us for help, but we're not going to accommodate you or make any changes to make this easier for you. It was like, it almost feels like they felt like there weren't enough people to make any real changes. They're like, yeah, just call us if you need something. But that's so, I think it's kind of belittling to an entire population of people where it's like, if you want to go to the bathroom, ask for help. It's like, just let, just make it so I can get into the bathroom by myself. Like, what is, what is wrong with you?
34:12 Danielle LaRock? Yeah. So clearly, there's a lot of room for improvement at that point in time. But this guidebook was a nice first step. I mean, you have to start somewhere. And in time, of course, more steps forward progressed. Since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, parks are required to incorporate accessibility by default rather than by request, making physical spaces friendlier to everyone, including digital spaces. For the vision and hearing impaired, parks require captions and image descriptions for any pictures shared online and audio descriptions of any video that they share. And in some places, park sites have started interpreting the history of disability in America at places like the home of Franklin D. Roosevelt, which is a national historic site in New York.
34:57 Danielle LaRock? As for trails, lots of parks have trails designated for mobility, shorter, often paved or boardwalk hikes. But all trails in national parks are open to adventure seekers like the Guadalupe Peak climbers. Rules against things like bikes do not apply to people with disabilities. If you depend on one to get around, wheelchairs are allowed wherever people are in national parks. That said, adaptive athletes have grown to favor a different type of tool, hand cycles. Instead of a two wheeled chair, hand cycles are kind of like three wheeled recumbent bikes that let you pedal with your hands. And I've seen people use them quite often, in Colorado especially.
35:37 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah, I see people on the road with them a lot.
35:40 Danielle LaRock? Yep. And we'll touch a bit more about what the future of accessibility in parks might look like towards the end. But for now, let's get to the Grand Canyon in our next story.
35:56 Danielle LaRock? This story begins on the Colorado River in 2014 as a group of whitewater kayakers prepared to raft the mighty Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. One of the kayakers is named Eric Weinmeier. Eric is an absolute legend and incredibly gifted athlete. His list of accomplishments is so insane, but just to give you like a just smidge of a taste here. Over the course of 13 years, he climbed the highest points on all seven continents, Denali, Kilimanjaro, and Mount Everest. And when he reached the summit of Everest in 2001, he was the first person to ever do so completely blind. When Eric was just four years old, he was diagnosed with a rare disease called retinoschisis.
36:39 Danielle LaRock? And over the next 10 years, he slowly lost what remained of his sight. The week before his freshman year in high school, the last remnants of his vision faded away. Completely blind, he said it felt like a prison. And shortly before that, his mother passed away. While he had support from friends and family, years later, Eric's dad described his fear that those experiences would break his son, that he'd be swallowed by despair, fear, or self pity. But they never did. Sure, he could never catch a baseball, but he could wrestle. And after wrestling, he joined a group that took blind children out to try adventure sports. Many people who are blind navigate the world with the assistance of poles and guide dogs, using those tools to traverse city streets and grocery stores.
37:23 Danielle LaRock? By his late twenties, Eric did all of that, and he'd also learned mountaineering, learned to cross crevasses on tiny ladders and scale the steep snow and ice to the top of Mount Everest. The achievement made worldwide news, and he later published a book about it called Touch the Top of the World. But on the way down, one of his friends and fellow climbers pulled him aside to celebrate and to make a request. He said, "Hey Eric, do me a favor, don't let this mountain be the greatest thing that you ever do."
37:54 Cassandra Yahnian? I love that. Like this is not your peak. You have so much more to do.
37:59 Danielle LaRock? Quite bold to say to someone, by the way.
38:04 Danielle LaRock? Um, but I, I understand the sentiment and Eric took it to heart. Among other activities, he found whitewater rafting. He trained for six years to learn how to maneuver a whitewater kayak with the help of a guide. A second kayaker who would follow right behind him and would shout different instructions, whether go left or right, slow down, speed up, kind of signal any sort of obstacles that were upcoming, just kind of like an audio guide of what was happening in the river. River guide Harlan Taney first met Eric on a trip he was on with Blind Youth and the two quickly became friends. Eric describes Taney as sort of like a river Yoda and the two came up with a plan.
38:47 Danielle LaRock? With Taney as support, Eric would paddle a one-man kayak the entire length of the Grand Canyon. A 21-day, 270-mile journey through over 80 big water rapids. The rapids on this river are so forceful and deafeningly loud that the most skilled paddlers can easily get turned around or flipped upside down. Flipping underwater in whitewater is a common but deadly and disorienting hazard. But it's safer to stay inside your boat than to be out of it. So for that reason, Eric trained tirelessly to perfect rolling a kayak. When underwater, the, I wouldn't know from personal experience, I've never done this. But they say, when underwater, you lean forward, steady the kayak with your knees
39:30 Danielle LaRock? and in one swift motion, you sweep your paddle away from the boat, pivoting and pushing your boat until you find yourself upright again. And just like swoosh yourself right back up. And from what I understand, of course, from no personal experience and solely watching YouTube videos, it looks really fucking hard.
39:48 Cassandra Yahnian? We, uh, when I worked in outdoor education, I worked with a lot of whitewater kayakers and we had a huge outdoor swimming pool. And some of the newer people who were learning to whitewater kayak would go in with their kayaks and they would practice.
40:03 Danielle LaRock? Have you done it before?
40:05 Cassandra Yahnian? No, I'm not a water person.
40:07 Danielle LaRock? I know, but you surprise me a lot of times with like little antidotes of things you've done. And I know you don't do it now, but I just didn't know.
40:16 Cassandra Yahnian? I watched happily from the sidelines.
40:19 Danielle LaRock? Okay, okay. Well, Eric mastered this and it got to the point that he could kind of just easily right himself. If he found himself in those situations, but between each rapid, there were long stretches of calm. And to navigate the river, Eric and Taney both wore helmets for safety. But they each had built in headsets and speakers to communicate with one another. Using the microphone, Taney guided Eric through the river, coached him through rapids and helped him stay oriented. It's remarkable to watch the level of teamwork and trust that the two share is really cool to witness. And again, if you want a little movie night rec, here it is. There's a documentary, it's longer than the one about the point team.
41:01 Danielle LaRock? And it's called The Weight of Water and it's all about this expedition that's about to unfold.
41:07 Cassandra Yahnian? Very cool.
41:08 Danielle LaRock? Eric went into this journey with a degree of pride. A feeling of quiet satisfaction that no other blind person had ever attempted what he was about to do. Of course, rafting the Grand Canyon, but then he met Lonnie. Lonnie Bedwell, a military veteran and power plant employee, lost his eyesight in a hunting accident at the age of thirty one. Like Eric, he stumbled on the sport of whitewater kayaking on his road to grappling with the loss of his sight. He joined a disabled veteran sports clinic and tried out a kayak in the pool. And came up with a pipe dream of rafting the Grand Canyon. So now Eric discovers he's not alone in this pursuit of wanting to, you know, do this huge accomplishment.
41:50 Danielle LaRock? And Lonnie was told that he couldn't raft the Colorado until he rolled his kayak at least a thousand times. So he went home that day, took his kayak out into the pond that he had behind his house. And just started rolling.
42:06 Danielle LaRock? He's just flipping and rolling. He's like, all right, I'm gonna master this.
42:09 Cassandra Yahnian? Let's do it.
42:10 Danielle LaRock? I'm gonna get to a thousand and, you know, jokingly said, as long as I can roll up as many times as I roll down, I'm golden.
42:17 Cassandra Yahnian? Sure. I'm dizzy just thinking about it, but.
42:21 Danielle LaRock? But.
42:21 Cassandra Yahnian? A thousand rolls.
42:22 Danielle LaRock? You go Lonnie. The two men originally decided to attempt to paddle the river completely independent of one another, just kind of like, let's, we have the same goal, but like, let's just do it on our own with our own teams and, you know, good luck.
42:36 Cassandra Yahnian? Like rooting each other on, just don't want to do it at the same time with each other.
42:40 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, but they changed, they changed their mind and ultimately they decided to do it together in hopes that their adventure would serve as kind of like an inspiration point to others to transcend barriers and team up and join forces and do something amazing together. And so two blind men set out on the same journey that summer. Both Eric and Lonnie had practiced tirelessly and built trusted relationships with their river guides. And as they made progress down the river, one hazard loomed large in their minds, and that was Lava Falls. Easily the hardest rapids of the entire journey, it drops 37 feet in just 100 yards. And to put that into perspective a little bit, the river normally
43:22 Danielle LaRock? drops eight feet per mile through the canyon. The currents here reach speeds of 20 miles an hour, chaotic waves threaten to turn you over, and a hole at the top of the rapids can suck you down and hold you underwater until you drown. And people have died here and lost their lives in the rapids, and of course, others throughout the entire canyon, but this one in particular was very daunting. And here are Eric and Lonnie doing all of this blind. And while they each had access to extraordinary reserves of both training and bravery, the trip scared them. Even as the days passed on their journey, as they conquered one rapid after another, Eric in particular really was dreading Lava Falls,
44:05 Danielle LaRock? a big milestone, 180 miles down the river. Some mornings, he would actually be so nervous about what was coming at Lava Falls that he would be physically sick. And like dry heave and just the anxiety and nervousness about this was really getting to him and starting to impact the other days preceding the event. But they kept making progress all the same. During the long periods of calm water, Eric could hear the canyon all around him. He could hear the water echoing off sheer cliffs and feel the sun on his face when it rose high in the sky and could feel the cold air when the canyon obscured the sun. He could feel the canyon all around him, even if he couldn't see it. And with each rapid, Taney guided Eric through each obstacle.
44:50 Danielle LaRock? Guided only by his voice, Eric paddled confidently into boiling torrents. In the documentary, this usually goes pretty well, pretty smoothly. But on one rapid, Eric plunges into a wave before coming to a complete stop, hung up on something as Taney zips by on the current. Then Eric and his boat disappear completely underwater before reappearing upside down ten yards down river. Rushing water brown with silt slams into him hard as he fights to roll before, in slow motion, he finally resurfaces. Undaunted, he paddles on to the next. Through the headset in their helmets, cutting through the roar of rushing water, Eric and Taney tackled one rapid after another.
45:31 Danielle LaRock? Lonnie, for his part, had two guides, one that led in front, calling out his name like a game of Marco Polo, and another behind him. The men developed an extraordinary amount of trust in one another. Danny had a mantra for Eric. Be clear, calm, and precise in your action, and be at peace in where you are in the moment. An approach and a system that worked pretty well, but it wasn't perfect. Nine days before Lava Falls, approaching yet another rapid, Taney shouted a command to Eric, "Hard left." But Eric couldn't hear him. The microphone, for whatever reason, had cut out. Taney spoke again and again, repeatedly issuing instructions that Eric just could not hear. Eric could only hear the rush of the river and paddled forward.
46:14 Danielle LaRock? Most rapids only last around thirty seconds to one minute. And even when you can see what's ahead of you, the rolling torrents can flip you into underwater rocks, slam you into cliff walls on the bank. Or into one another collisions that can easily leave you unconscious. Eric had several accidents before joking after he dented his helmet that it's almost better to not know that it's coming, which is a perspective. The way that you get hurt worse is when you tense up for an impact compared to relaxing. So
46:45 Cassandra Yahnian? I've heard that in car accidents too.
46:48 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, same.
46:49 Cassandra Yahnian? So it's like, if you truly don't know, you're not going to be stressed about it beforehand or
46:53 Danielle LaRock? I don't know. Yeah, cuz he is stressed, you know.
46:57 Cassandra Yahnian? For sure. I mean, this is no easy. I would feel this way even with eyesight and to not see what's coming. I mean, I, I agree with him, though. It's almost better just not to know. It's like, I'm out here regardless. I've been training for this. Like, let's go.
47:14 Danielle LaRock? Yeah.
47:15 Cassandra Yahnian? And
47:16 Danielle LaRock? God, just makes me nervous.
47:17 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah.
47:18 Danielle LaRock? Just like telling it. Luckily, in this case, Taney was able to paddle close and shout over the water. And that night, they were able to repair the broken headset. But even with a functional headset, Taney described the level of stress he was under as a guide. Because Eric's safety, you know, he felt was completely up to him.
47:37 Cassandra Yahnian? Putting his entire trust in him and his safety. Like, he, he does have a lot of pressure on him to guide him correctly to use. And I'm thinking, I was thinking about this earlier when you were telling this story, that you have to be such a good communicator to it is really difficult to instruct someone with what you are envisioning and seeing and having the words you use make sense for that for someone else. Like, I just picture in gym class. I remember in gym class, we used to pair up in teams and you would have someone, they would put a bandana over your eyes and they would tell you instructions on where to do certain obstacles.
48:20 Cassandra Yahnian? And it was supposed to be like a team building activity. But it was so hard to say what you meant when someone else couldn't see what you were talking about. So I was just thinking, I was kind of reminiscing on that experience in elementary school. And then his communication skills have to be so good for him to really be saying and explaining correctly where it can't be misconstrued misconstrued for something else.
48:48 Danielle LaRock? Yeah. And not only that, so not only do you have to be impeccable in your communication skills, he too was running these dangerous rapids. He also was navigating treacherous conditions. And of course he has plenty of experience. He's a guide that knows what he's doing. On this particular trip, he really needed to do his best to not roll over even for a short time because he needed to be Eric's eyes, not only for his own safety, but for Eric's as well.
49:22 Cassandra Yahnian? He needed to be in constant communication. He couldn't. I'm also envisioning while this is all happening though, I know there's a lot of seriousness of instruction and stuff, but I'm also envisioning every time they make it through a rapid, they're both like yelling in each other's ears. Every time they go down like a small waterfall or whatever it is down a big rapid, I'm just picturing like the hooting and hollering of like, fuck yeah, we did it.
49:47 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, there's a lot of celebration, of course, alongside some of these more anxious moments. But yeah, like he was just really worried about getting swept down river or moving past Eric in any way, or getting like hung up on something because then he was, you know, both Eric and him were out of contact with another with one another and it could have been really bad.
50:19 Danielle LaRock? On the shoreline each night, the rafters took part in familiar river rituals, jumping off waterfalls and bathing in creeks, drinking PBR and whiskey out of boots on their wetsuits. Eric got around using a trekking pole like a walking stick. Yeah, I know. Ew, people.
50:35 Cassandra Yahnian? PBR out of their boots.
50:37 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, river people, is that a thing?
50:41 Cassandra Yahnian? Does it add to the flavor? That's disgusting.
50:45 Danielle LaRock? I mean, that's what they say is the thing to do on the river.
50:52 Cassandra Yahnian? I mean, if that was, if everyone else was doing it and it was like what you're supposed to do, I, I would try it, but ew.
51:00 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, it's already kind of gross out of a can and.
51:03 Cassandra Yahnian? Just add some stinky feet flavor in there and it's good to go.
51:08 Danielle LaRock? Oh, yeah. Well, Eric got around using the trekking pole like a walking stick as people played music, sang songs, and celebrated the beauty of their adventure. And around the campfire, he had time to reflect about where he was and what he was doing. Why was he floating the river? The point crew wanted to show the world what disabled people were capable of. Eric had already done that. He was the first man to climb Everest, blind, an achievement that earned him acclaim and praise worldwide. I mean, he wrote a whole book about it. Like, this was no small, private feat. This was something that was celebrated around the world. But as Eric got married, started a family, and a career as a public speaker, the scale of his accomplishment led many to write off the barriers he faced
51:51 Danielle LaRock? each day as a blind man, offering him a stream of kind, yet empty-feeling words of encouragement. In the documentary, he says, "I'm probably not supposed to say this, but I honestly hate it when people tell me that anything is possible. Barriers, they are not imagined. They're not perceived. They're real. They're real things with substance, and they actually hurt a lot."
52:13 Cassandra Yahnian? It's kind of minimizing your experience. It's like, you can do it. Anything's possible. It's like, yes, but also can we recognize that things are a lot more difficult for me to have anything be possible?
52:27 Danielle LaRock? Yes, absolutely. And that was kind of his whole thing. He's like, I appreciate the encouragement and.
52:33 Cassandra Yahnian? It's like, I'm glad you believe that, but also please recognize that I am living a different life.
52:41 Danielle LaRock? Exactly, exactly. And on this river trip, Eric felt a weight of his reputation. He would lie awake, his stomach tied up in knots, and worried about lava falls. And he would ask himself, "I climbed Mount Everest, so why am I so fucking scared? Sometimes I don't know why I stick with this. Partly, it's because of my friends." They're not seeing this little blind guy squirming in the corner. They're seeing something else and I want to be that thing they see. But despite his fears, he never quit. Point climbed Guadalupe Peak to show the world what they were capable of. And Eric was in the Grand Canyon to remind himself. Finally, Eric, Taney and Lonnie all arrived at the place in the river that they had been waiting for. Lava Falls.
53:23 Danielle LaRock? Out of their kayaks, the men hiked along the shore to stand above the falls. Eric, listening to the roiling water as Taney talked strategy, hugging the eddy line pointing right downstream to boils that shouldn't tip you over, but could point you one way or another as you went through. It takes two minutes to make it all the way through Lava Falls. And after strategizing, they set out. As the river got louder around them, here are the instructions that Eric heard through his headset. Getting close to that slick we heard about, still in green water, approaching this boil. Calm strokes, fight the spin, hard right, hard right, left turn, you're good. Then suddenly Eric's boat got caught by a wave and flipped upside down. But he quickly rolled back over, hearing Taney over the raging water.
54:08 Danielle LaRock? You're good, hard right. But Eric flipped again. Fighting the waves to roll for what felt like forever, he eventually had to give up. He bailed from his boat, pulled his spray skirt from the cockpit and swam towards Taney's voice. Grabbing onto his paddle, he was pulled ashore. He had nearly made it all the way and fell out right before the end. Eric was demoralized. He had spent the whole trip worried about Lava Falls, only to fall out. Despite Taney's kind words, Eric felt like a drowned rat. As if to brush it off, Eric joked with the cameraman, because of course, remember there's a documentary being filmed throughout this entire thing. He joked, you wanted to see me swim, didn't you? But like each time before, Eric refused to give up.
54:51 Danielle LaRock? After a short while, he returned to his guide's side, saying, I didn't successfully run lava, I swam lava. What's the possibility of me trying it again? So they hiked back up to try again. Carrying their kayaks upriver along the shore, Eric described that he didn't need to succeed. He just needed to know that he gave it his all and this was giving it his all.
55:13 Cassandra Yahnian? It's like, I have to try again.
55:14 Danielle LaRock? Yep. With his guide right behind him and the weight of one failure and 180 miles of worry on his shoulders, Eric plunged in a second time. Studying himself through one wave after another, Eric was pushed from all sides, left, right, then up in the air, and suddenly upside down yet again. But he quickly righted himself. Water swirling around him, he paddled again and again until the river flipped him another time before quickly rolling back upright. And then suddenly, he was through. Taney paddled up beside him, wrapping him in a huge hug. With tears in his eyes, he said, "Thanks for letting us be here with you." Lonnie, who also made it through, circled up with Eric and they clapped their paddles together like a high five. They had
55:56 Danielle LaRock? done it. The rest of the river was easy by comparison. Their training and the incredible trust that they found with their guides had paid off. For Lonnie, it was a life-changing experience. In the years since, he rafted the Grand Canyon a second time, guiding a trip with four other blind veterans. Just last year, in 2025, he finished climbing the highest summits on all seven continents, all while seeking to inspire others like him and confront how little society can come to expect from a blind person. As for Eric, the trip was another accolade in his legacy as an athlete, and a powerful reminder of what he valued in life. He said that being blind can make him feel distant from the events of his own life, even rafting. He
56:38 Danielle LaRock? wanted to experience the river the way Taney could, but it felt like he was just going through the motions, like looking through a window at somebody else's life rather than his own. But the trust he developed with his friend, the skills he'd harnessed, and the never-quite attitude that helped him get through Lava Falls helped him experience life in vivid detail. And as he paddled ashore, his wife and kids were there to surprise him. That year, the two were nominated as National Geographic Adventurers of the Year and remain friends to this day. And as with most episodes, my retelling is a very brief look at two remarkable athletes with a lifetime worth of stories. So like I said, there's a book. There is always a book. Of
57:19 Danielle LaRock? course, the documentary I mentioned before, The Weight of Water. But you can also read Eric's second book. No barriers, a blind man's journey to kayak the Grand Canyon. And I actually was going through my camera roll because one of my goals for this year is to clean up my camera roll because I have like seven, eight thousand pictures on it. I started the screenshots because I feel like that's the easiest thing to clear out. And for whatever reason, I had taken a screenshot of a photo I had taken at the library from two and a half years ago of this book.
57:50 Cassandra Yahnian? Oh, no way.
57:51 Danielle LaRock? I'm like, oh, this would be a good episode, I think.
57:54 Cassandra Yahnian? And here we are.
57:55 Danielle LaRock? And here we are. Yeah. As soon as I saw the cover of that, the title didn't really spur the memory, but the, the cover, I was like, oh my God. I saw this years ago and it's coming full circle. Uh, as for Lonnie, he has his own website, lonnibedwell.com. And he made a documentary about one of his later Grand Canyon expeditions called The Long River Home. And so we have a couple documentaries here, a couple of book recommendations. And now there's a podcast recommendation because Eric has a podcast called No Barriers, where he talks with other people who have overcome the odds of life, including many stories of resilience in the face of disability. He has over 200 episodes stretching back to October of 2018.
58:38 Danielle LaRock? So he's been in the game for a really long time. And I really recommend listening to this show, the show, the podcast, if you ever want to feel good about humans again, because the amount of episodes that he has about all sorts of just massively inspiring stories of all kinds that kind of just run the gamut of every sort of like, I overcame this, this hard thing in life. It's just so incredible and he does a really good job with the show. So podcast.
59:11 Cassandra Yahnian? What's it called again?
59:12 Danielle LaRock? No Barriers.
59:13 Cassandra Yahnian? No Barriers. I love that. That's really cool. And I love shows like that, too.
59:19 Danielle LaRock? As these stories have hopefully illustrated, disability is not a black and white category. As John Jarvis put it, "It's just a different ability." Adaptive athletes are adopting better tools like hand cycles and taking advantage of lightweight electric motor assistance. State parks across the country have started offering all-terrain wheelchairs, motorized chairs with tank-like treads, that help users conquer landscapes that slow down most wheelchairs, like sandy beaches or trails covered in rocks and tree roots. And national parks have largely steered towards a new approach to accessibility in trails. "The more information, the better." Saying a trail is easy or hard can be helpful, but easy and hard mean different things to different people, and they're unhelpfully vague for most wheelchair users.
1:00:03 Danielle LaRock? New tools have been tried across different parks to measure not just the total length of the trail, but detailed foot-by-foot measurements of its route and its dimensions. What the trail surface is made of, where the steepest sections are, and how wide or narrow the trail is, and any obstacles that you might find along the way. A substantial redesign of a park's trail system is a cost beyond the scope of current park budgets. This extra info is relatively inexpensive to collect through these machines that are called HE-TAPS. They kind of look like strollers and are used to collect precise data on trail conditions, like grade, cross-slope, width, and surface type, and can help adaptive athletes safely assess what trails are within their abilities. But progress like collecting this type of data has slowed down.
1:00:48 Danielle LaRock? As we have discussed in previous episodes and as many people are aware of, national parks have lost about 25% of their permanent workforce, and proposed budgets from the current administration threaten to cut agency funding by at least a third. Webpages featuring wholesome interviews with wheelchair-using visitors now have alert at the top. Warning readers that any guidance on inclusion should be considered rescinded. In March of 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice withdrew 11 guidance documents related to the Americans with Disabilities Act, creating concerns among advocates that accessibility protections are being weakened. While the ADA law itself remains in effect, this action removed-
1:01:28 Danielle LaRock? Or rescinded various interpretations and technical assistance documents that previously helped businesses and public entities understand their compliance obligations. All of this to say, these stories of accessibility in parks shows that progress is not handed over. It is earned, won through persistence, grit and faith in the future. A belief that no matter the obstacles ahead of you, you can make a difference. As Eric said, I could care less whether people climb mountains or kayak, but we're hoping that people look within themselves and say, what am I capable of doing?
1:02:01 Cassandra Yahnian? Wow. What a really cool episode to do. And I honestly didn't know any of that last part about how
1:02:10 Cassandra Yahnian? how signs and inclusivity around people living with disabilities is being taken from national parks.
1:02:17 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, it's a scary time.
1:02:19 Cassandra Yahnian? I didn't, I don't understand why that would even be a thing.
1:02:24 Cassandra Yahnian? Obviously, there's a lot of questions around that, but I didn't realize that. And that's, that's awful because it feels like throughout the episode, I was just like, yeah, we're making strides forward. We're adding all of these things. And then why would we make things less accessible to people? I just don't understand that.
1:02:42 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, it's kind of like at this time, we're seeing the erasure and removal of a lot of information in parks, kind of across the board. And it feels like it's touching everything that's important from the history of slavery to, you know, ADA accessible documents to, you know, it's just like, it's kind of like, what is it not touching at this point? So I just, I didn't want to harp on it because I wanted this to be an overall positive episode. But it's really important to recognize that, yes, we've made strides. Yes, people are going against the odds and just proving what people with disabilities are capable of.
1:03:24 Danielle LaRock? And that's all amazing, but they're like Eric said, like there are barriers that we still have to overcome and there are still things that we need to deal with. And like this is one of those things that is just another.
1:03:39 Cassandra Yahnian? And just to make life more difficult, just I I just don't get it. And I do think it's important because it's something that we can all push for and we can all make our voices known for on things like that and we can pay attention to to this. But yeah, that's super disappointing. Because, I mean, we say it a lot on the podcast, but national parks are for everybody. And to make it less accessible to some people than others is just not fair.
1:04:07 Danielle LaRock? Yeah. Well, I wanted to end with, like I said, there are a couple other stories I wanted to touch briefly on other than the two I just highlighted kind of in depth. And these are just quick recs. I definitely recommend looking into them further if you'd like. But one of them is about named Ste- is about a man named Stephen Wampler. And you may have seen, if your algorithm is anything like mine, which I have a feeling it is not. But recently in my algorithm, I've been getting clips of this documentary that have kind of been making the rounds. So Stephen is a documentary producer and mountaineer who was born with cerebral palsy
1:04:47 Danielle LaRock? that affects the entire left side of his body. He was the first person with cerebral palsy to climb El Cap. And the documentary follows his ascent and it's so fucking cool. He produced the documentary in 2020, I believe, and it's called Wampler's Ascent and it's free on YouTube. Please go watch it. It is so great. His wife and his family is there like cheering him on. It's a whole big event and it's just incredible to watch him again, like just kind of in juxtaposition of Alex Honnold, like we've all watched Alex do this. And now to watch, I mean, not throwing shade on anybody, but like it's just
1:05:29 Danielle LaRock? like Alex has used everything in his body, you know, and somebody like Stephen did it in such a different way and it was so emotional and amazing. I loved it so much. And he's done a lot of other amazing things. He created a foundation to help disabled children and he's just done a lot of incredible things. So if you You want to look into his story, I highly recommend that. And then another one I actually recommended in a new, one of our newsletters a couple of months ago. I forget which one it was, but it's for a National Geographic documentary called Blink and it was released in 2024 and it follows a Canadian family on an epic worldwide adventure after three of their
1:06:10 Danielle LaRock? young children are diagnosed with an incurable eye condition, which is called retinas pigmentosa. It's rare and curable and it's genetic and the disease causes progressive vision loss, leading to night blindness, tunnel vision, and eventual complete blindness. So they basically have their kids create bucket lists of things they want to see and experience around the world before they go blind. And the whole documentary is about just their epic adventures.
1:06:40 Cassandra Yahnian? I've seen the trailer for this one. I I've never watched it. I'm not sure why. I feel like I don't have the streaming platform, but I have seen it and that's really, really cool to do.
1:06:50 Danielle LaRock? So those are my two recs for more documentaries to watch. I'm on a documentary kick. But yeah, so that is the episode. I hope you guys enjoyed it. I know it was a little different from what we usually do is like regarding format and stuff for the stories, but yeah.
1:07:08 Cassandra Yahnian? I think it was really cool. I'm glad that you touched on it because we actually get this topic as a recommendation quite a bit. And I think it's a really good way to highlight, like you mentioned at the beginning, the resilience of people. But I also think that there's this stigma against any person living with a disability that society almost caps their potential of what they can and cannot do. And I just think that it's a reminder that nobody can tell you what you're capable of in whatever aspect. I mean, if you're not this crazy athlete, but finding something that you want to do and not listening to society being like, sorry, that's outside your ability. Yeah. And it's like, yes, maybe, but maybe not. Maybe this is something
1:07:53 Cassandra Yahnian? I can do and I just have to figure out a different way to do it.
1:07:56 Danielle LaRock? Absolutely. Well, thank you everyone so much for listening. We will see you next week. In the meantime, enjoy the view.
1:08:03 Cassandra Yahnian? Go watch your back.
1:08:04 Danielle LaRock? Bye, guys. Thank you for joining us again this week. If you love National Park After Dark and want to hear exclusive bonus stories, join us on Patreon or Apple subscriptions. Patreon subscribers have access to our National Park After Dark Book Club, live streams, Discord, and much more. If you prefer to watch our episodes, video episodes are now available on YouTube. If you're enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe on your favorite listening platform. And to follow along with all our adventures, you can find us on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and X at National Park After Dark.
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