Top Five Accessible Winter Sports
This winter there are more ways than ever for everyone to be able to enjoy snow sports and a growing number of organisations and resorts are catering for additional needs and accessibility issues. Here are five of the best...
This is a feature from Issue 13 of Charitable Traveller. Click to read more from this issue.
1. Deaf Skiers in La Plagne
This winter, the ESF (French ski school) in Belle Plagne is launching five week-long courses for deaf skiers, finishing with a fun, timed competition on the Belle Plagne slalom field. The French resort, part of the 425km Paradiski area, has five instructors who are fluent in sign language, and as well as running the courses, can be booked for lessons throughout the season!
2. Meeting Mental Health Challenges
Snowbility brings the joy of snowsports to people with additional needs and mental health challenges, thanks to its team of fully qualified ski and snowboard instructors working at the Hemel Hempstead Snow Centre. It provides tailor-made coaching for a wide range of complex needs, including learning disabilities, autism, dyspraxia, and deafness, and aims to improve participant’s self-confidence by enhancing their social and emotional skills, and improving their fitness, balance, and concentration.
snowbility.co.uk
3. Go Big in the USA
Offering quite possibly the largest programme of year-round adaptive outdoor experiences is the National Sports Center for the Disabled in Winter Park, Colorado. It runs camps, clinics, and courses for every winter sport imaginable, including ski biking and cross-country skiing, expertly tailored to each individual’s needs.
nscd.org
4. The Restorative Power of the Alps
Working to make the magic of winter mountain experiences inclusive and accessible for all, the Ski 2 Freedom Foundation helps people find the most suitable adaptive or assisted ski lesson, guide, or sit-ski equipment, the ideal ski resort, or the most appropriate place to stay across the Alps. Founded by Catherine Cosby, whose daughter was born with a rare genetic neurological disorder, Catherine discovered renewed strength and mental well-being from respite trips to the Alps, and it’s these healing qualities the foundation aims to share with other families.
ski2freedom.com/en
5. Sit-down snowboarding in the UK
Thanks to the legacy of Keith Wood, an adaptive snowboard instructor who passed away last year, people with accessibility needs can now try snowboarding at Hemel Hempstead’s indoor snow slope, thanks to funds raised in his memory to purchase the UK’s first sit-snowboard. While up to now Disability Snowsport UK has had a range of sit-skis, props, and outriggers to accommodate all types of mobility issues on skis, this is the first time snowboarding has been possible. Using a Prodaptive Twin Ride Snowboard, built in the Netherlands, anyone can experience the freedom of snowboarding – at the snowboard’s UK launch in September, an 11-year-old double amputee quickly got the hang of it.
disabilitysnowsport.org.uk
by net effect