Post Morbus

Around November of 2024 I got it in my head that I missed skiing and I wondered what options there were for accessible winter sports. I discovered the Canadian Adaptive Snowsports (CADS) in a random google but unfortunately, they had already booked up for the 2025 season. I did get them to add me to their mailing list though so as soon as they opened their rosters for 2026, I applied.

Because I didn’t want to take a spot from another participant, I asked The Eldest to sign on as a volunteer with me. She was happy to sign up because a> she would get more volunteer hours to put towards the hours she needs to graduate high school[1]; and b> she absolutely hated teaching skiing. Like, really, really, really hated it. So she was happy to keep skiing as a volunteer as long as she didn’t have to teach multiple kids. FAIR. She did her time. We applied and were accepted into the program!

The snow machine in full force over the hill

What surprised me the most about CADS is the cost: it was only $250 for 8 weeks of skiing! When I expressed shock about this the volunteer I spoke with thought I found it too expensive – but really, I found it super cheap! As someone who grew up skiing and who has two kids who did skiing and snowboarding since they were in kindergarten, most years it’s been three times that amount and only went down when we bought them their own equipment when they stopped growing[2]. It used to cost between $600 and $750 per season, per kid and so I was so used to that price that I just ended up donating $500 to the program on top of my fee because that’s what I had budgeted for! I get it though: most disabled folks don’t have a lot of money, not only is being disabled wildly expensive, most of them also live on incredibly small incomes.

Early morning mist on the hill

Early in the new year Mr. Tucker and I went up so I could get fitted for a sit ski. I had justjust met the weight requirement for not only the equipment but also for the tethering. Because every participant requires two volunteers and with a sit ski at least one of them has to be certified to tether with a sit ski, it limited the amount of people who could participate in the program because they are also limited by their own weight and their own training. While there is a lot of variety of the types of disabilities CADS folks have, the physically disabled people have a bunch of different equipment types they can use depending on the severity of their mobility challenges. Because I have no balance, I wasn’t able to just tether standing up or use a “slider” which is similar to a walker on skis.

Gearing up first thing in the morning

Our Sunday mornings were pretty chaotic for the 8 weeks of the season. Mr. Tucker would drive The Youngest to catch the bus for her Snowboard Instructor job, then as soon as he got home, The Eldest and I would hop into the car and head north into Quebec for our ski day. Because they prefer that their volunteers stay all day, she did both the morning and the afternoon sessions that ran from 10-noon and from 1-3 with an hour lunch in the middle. I just sat in the chalet in the morning and read books and then I did my session in the afternoon after we ate lunch together.

Balaklava, heated socks, handwarmers and a helmet…oh my!

The Eldest was paired with a couple of different folks at the beginning but after week three, she had the same skier and the same head volunteer for both the morning and afternoon sessions. Her skier had an intellectual disability so she just needed some help with guidance but generally was great on her own. My kid really enjoyed working with both the participant and the other volunteer and actually enjoyed the entire experience much more than she expected to!

What was surprising is that they give the volunteers a free season’s pass to the hill (which apparently also includes the tubing, which is rad!). So on Family Day The Eldest took the car up to the hill by herself and did some skiing on her own, which is a nice little bonus!

The Eldest and her team on top of the hill

The sit skis are absolutely wild in the fact that the volunteers unlatch it, lift the seat from the ski part and then you basically sit on the chairlift in the sit ski as it sweeps you up. Getting off, they click a button that releases the seat back down towards the ski and then you glide off of the chairlift like you would if you are standing. It’s a terrifying experience and you have to give up complete control to the volunteers (who know what they’re doing! I had zero issues with the chair lift!).

The person I was paired with weekly was a guy named Jeff who has to be the kindest man on earth given that he volunteers almost every day of the week with either training, guiding various programs or doing lessons at various hills in the region. He is the king of the dad joke but you can tell he is just a really outgoing, giving guy. In many ways he is the backbone of the organization and while many volunteers keep the entire ship afloat, more than one person mentioned that CADS would be lost without Jeff’s dedication to it. Along with Jeff I had a few other volunteers – all wonderful, lovely people.

Also, Jeff also only lost me once in the woods – on the last day, no less! Some kids cut in front of us so we turned but then they saw us and they turned which lead us onto a collision course that Jeff narrowly missed by letting me go off the side of the hill. Sadly, the other volunteer, Andrew thought Jeff was going to stop and when he didn’t Andrew tried to grab me and then ALSO went off of the side of the hill and landed in some trees. We were both laughing so hard at the absurdity of it all as I dangled half on/half off of the hill that Jeff had to come take Andrew’s skis off so that he could climb out of the woods – and the soft powder of the woods was so deep that he was waist deep standing up [3]! Thankfully, one of the other volunteers, Greg saw us careen off of the hill and came and helped Jeff and Andrew haul me back up. That was the last run of the season for us!

It’s as comfy as it looks

Driving home early in the season we were chatting and my daughter said, “I like volunteering way better than I like teaching. People actually appreciate you and are grateful for your help where with teaching I never felt like that. Also, the people are all so nice and welcoming and with teaching I never felt like I fit in.” It’s so true, too: I didn’t meet anyone in the CADS community who wasn’t just absolutely welcoming and kind. On our last day, we brought one of my best friend’s kids with us and even he was amazed at how welcoming everyone was to him. Although, you could argue that people don’t get involved in volunteering with an organization like that if they aren’t the most kind, amazing folks around.

Our friend’s kid drove up with us and at lunch him & The Eldest did some runs together

Yesterday was the last day of the season. After 8 weeks of skiing, I feel like it’s time to hang up the sit ski. The birds are singing and it is brighter in the mornings so I am happy to enter into the spring season after a very successful first season of doing adaptive skiing. The Eldest may go up on March break and take advantage of her season’s pass one last time, but overall we had a great year and are ready to have our Sundays to ourselves again.

I am not going to lie: even though I was brought up skiing and was a skier my entire life, adaptive skiing was a whole new ballgame for me. I had to give up control to the volunteers and learn an entirely new way of navigating the hill. I was never afraid of heights or the hill in the past but this year it took me a little while to find my bearings in the sit ski. I was scared the first few times I fell (and one of those times I rolled right over like a bad car crash – much to the horror of my kid who was there at the time!) and I hit more moguls and icy patches than I would have liked to while I learned how to navigate. I won’t say I became a great sit-skier this year but I managed to feel a huge amount of anxiety and do it anyway.

The Eldest ended up enjoying it so much that she plans to come back and volunteer again next year. I ordered an official CADS jacket for her as a thank you for doing this with me. I think she initially did it so that I could do it but was surprised at how much she enjoyed the people and the skiing community they’ve created (and the ability to ski for free was a nice bonus she didn’t anticipate!). I hope to be back again next year but even if it doesn’t happen, I am grateful I did it this year at least. It’s so easy when you are disabled to just give up so many things because it feels like you are climbing a mountain to just do the things you used to do. It’s just nice to know that there is an entire world of people who are out there volunteering their time to help you be able to do things that most folks don’t even think twice about just doing. I am eternally grateful to them.

[If you have a few extra dollars to spare in your budget, a CADS donation is certainly appreciated. Many of these programs run on fumes so every dollar helps. Thanks, friends!]

The last day was costume day! Here is The Eldest as PB sandwich.

[1] She had a few hours already logged but needed a few more. I absolutely hate that this is a requirement to graduate from high school. I think it turns volunteering into a chore instead of a great community building exercise, and because it needs to be done outside of school hours, it punishes kids who need to work to help support their families.

[2] When your kids are young it is so expensive to outfit them that it just made more sense to rent until they grew all that they would grow. In fact, my dad actually bought them their equipment a few years ago and they’ve both taken really good care of their stuff. We just wax & sharpen their gear every year.

[3] We laughed because we were safe, but the snow off of the mountain can get incredibly deep and you can die by Snow Immersion Suffocation (SIS) which may have killed a woman in Banff earlier this season.