- [Chris] You don't have to go 100 miles out of town to enjoy the outdoors.

This time on "Wild Nevada", we wanna show that even if you have mobility challenges, you can get outside and have a great time.

- [Dave] Everybody's accessibility to the outdoors is greater than it's ever been and we're gonna learn about the technology that makes that possible and see it in action.

Right now on "Wild Nevada" - [Narrator] Support for PBS, Reno and Wild Nevada comes in part from the William N. Pennington Foundation.

Bill Pennington was an entrepreneur, philanthropist, and gaming pioneer who built a legacy of community service in Nevada.

- [Narrator] Travel Nevada helps provide travel inspiration and experiences for those interested in creating their own wild Nevada adventures.

For more information, visit travelnevada.com.

And by Millie Hopper and Millard Reed, Charles and Margaret Burback, Sande Family Foundation, Kristine Perry, Thelma B. and Thomas P. Hart Foundation, June S. Wisham Trust, the Hall Family, Dillard and Meg Myers, Sara and Leonard LaFrance in memory of Sue McDowell and by individual members.

(bright acoustic guitar music) (upbeat acoustic guitar music) - In this episode, we're gonna do things a little bit differently and we're gonna be staying in town instead of going to someplace a little more wild.

- (chuckles) And that's because not everybody is able to travel long distances to far away places.

But here closer to town, there are a lot of opportunities for outdoor activities that are accessible to everyone and we wanted to highlight those.

- The city of Reno has a lot of fun programs that have accessibility in mind and one of them is right here at the city of Reno Adaptive Cycling Center.

- [Dave] We meet April Wolfe, a Therapeutic Recreation Specialist for the city of Reno.

She introduces us to the center.

- So, this is the City of Reno's Adaptive Cycling Center.

We launched this May to be able to provide a location and adaptive bikes for persons with disabilities to access all the great trails in this area.

- So when you use the term adaptive, what does that mean?

When a person comes out to cycle, why is it adaptive?

- So, normally we're used to seeing a two wheel traditional bike at the Adaptive cycling center we have three wheel bikes that are foot pedal, recumbent, maybe we have a hand powered bike for somebody that may not be able to utilize their legs to power a bike.

We have Tandem cycles, side-by-side cycles.

So, there's really something for everybody to accommodate any disability that might wanna come out and ride.

- Even if you don't have a disability, if you just wanna try a different form of cycling is it available?

- Absolutely, so you know, we're an aging community and so maybe balancing on a two wheel bike is a little scary and we might might wanna try a foot pedaled recumbent that's low to the ground and has the option not to tip over.

You know, there's something for everyone here.

- Where were you guys 20 years ago when we were falling off of bikes left and right?

We could have used you.

- Totally, so the intention is, you know, families have their hold trailers of bikes and racks of bikes, but maybe you have a child with a disability or you have an older parent that needs a specialized bike.

Now you can bring them to the Adaptive Cycling Center, grab a bike for mom or your child and then go out together as a family and everybody's riding.

- [Dave] Inside the garage Tony Goulet makes sure all the bikes are in good working order.

- I maintain all the pieces of equipment that we have, all the adaptive equipment that we have in the city of Reno.

'Cause we not only do we have all the bicycles here at the Adaptive Cycling Center, I also have a fleet of mountain bikes, a fleet of wheelchairs, sled hockey equipment.

So, we have a whole variety of equipment when people have disabilities and they wanna get out and recreate as you can kinda see the equipment is very large and it can be difficult to transport.

So, if you don't have the vehicle to do it or maybe have a friend to help you out, it becomes very difficult and daunting and those people are kinda excluded from recreating.

So, now we just built a central location.

So, now you can come, if you're in a wheelchair, you jump right out of your wheelchair, jump onto a bike and get right out on the trails.

- Well, I'm riding the Top End Force R just laying it, just kinda like that.

Get this left foot over.

Put that one in.

I just gotta get my helmet and my gloves on and I'm ready to roll.

- [Dave] So how do you pedal with this, with your hands and then how do you break?

- So, to go forward, just pedal forward, - [Dave] Both hands at the same time?

- Yep.

- Okay.

- And then to stop pedal backwards.

- Today I am riding a, an adaptive tricycle.

So, it's a tricycle because I'm in a wheelchair, I have spinal cord injury, I can't walk, but I have some use of my legs.

So, this is a tricycle 'cause I can't balance obviously on a normal bike and it's got e-assist so it's like electric bicycle.

I can't throttle and go, but I've got a pedal but it'll basically triple my power.

I got enough function I can ride.

I got flat terrain that I can ride now.

So, this has been just like amazing.

I mean I haven't ridden a bike since my accident and it's, this is pure joy.

Probably go up and down Veterans Parkway once and kinda head up toward downtown and come back and probably about 20 miles.

So take an hour and a half or so.

City of Reno is amazing.

I mean this program that they have here with the adaptive program is the ability to rent these bikes.

The ability to open a cycling center.

- Yeah, I have a couple of guys that they have the same favorite bike and yeah, so it's all, who shows up first that day gets to ride it.

- Gotta get here early, get the good bike or you get stuck with the slow ones.

- [Dave] The center's location at Rosewood Nature Study area fostered a partnership with Truckee Meadows Parks Foundation which runs Rosewood and they have their own adaptive equipment, the GRIT Freedom Chair.

- This one is specifically for if you're trying to go over some obstacles, a lot of rocks, there's some loose gravel.

This one, it's as the name says, grit.

It's very gritty and gives it a little bit more ease of access.

- Not only can you take the adaptive bikes and go off into the bikeways, now there's a piece of adaptive equipment that you can then get on the trails and go discover the nature study area as well.

- [Chris] Across town from the cycling center, you can find an opportunity that is both fun and therapeutic.

This is the Center for Adaptive Riding.

(soft music) Nikki Landa is the executive director.

- We provide equine assisted services.

So, our main program is therapeutic horseback writing for children and adults with disabilities.

- [Chris] And what does that equestrian experience, what does that do for people with disabilities?

- Therapeutic riding promotes the physical, cognitive, social and emotional wellbeing for everybody.

So, we incorporate goals into lessons and the horses are able to provide so much for our participants.

Our horses, a lot of them are older, they may have an injury or something that prevents them from doing what they used to do and they get to come in and be a therapy horse and they're all pretty special.

They go through a training course, make sure they're okay with it.

We do a lot of games and rings and balls and things like that.

So, we make sure that they're comfortable with that and enjoy the job.

(soft music) - [Chris] I am guessing an operation like this, it takes a lot of both horsepower and manpower.

- Yeah, so we have about 40 to 50 volunteers at a given time who come each week.

Volunteers help care for the horses, cleaning, they're always keeping us busy and then they help in lessons and everything that you can think of.

So, if your horse does not walk on, when you say walk on, you can give them a gentle squeeze with your legs.

three, two, one whoa, and gently pull.

Yes, good.

Pulling your reins.

It is so much more than a pony ride.

We incorporate those goals so riders come and they can work on educational goals, social skills, physical goals.

It is just so much more, it really is empowering people through horseback riding.

Now you're gonna take one hand to the neck and one hand to the tail, get a good twist and switch.

Nice.

- [Chris] Horses are not necessarily easy to have on your own or maintain or have access to.

So, being able to provide that has gotta be just a rewarding service.

- It is.

And on top of everything, this is just an amazing recreational opportunity for people to have fun.

You know, people with disabilities don't have access to a lot of opportunities and so this is another opportunity for them to get outdoors and just experience horseback riding.

And sit up really tall look where you wanna go and say, "Walk up."

Yeah, and if Blackjack, he may need a little encouragement, you can give him a little squeeze with your legs.

Woo, look at that fast walk with dude.

Each week we work on different riding skills.

So, I set a goal for each rider for the lesson and then we set up, you can see we have cone set up for today.

So, we do a different skill and then an activity.

So, that may be a game to reinforce that skill.

So, we have volunteers who come early, they get the horses ready, they lead the horse around and then I instruct the lesson and riders get to work on having fun and with their riding skills.

- [Chris] So really not only do you help the riders and the participants, but the volunteers get to have a horse experience too.

- It's pretty amazing the feedback I get from volunteers that it's just such a heartwarming experience for them and they gain a lot from it.

- [Chris] What sort of experiences have you had?

What has it meant to you?

- It makes me emotional.

(laughs) It's amazing what the horses provide.

I've seen riders who are so shy and quiet, not confident, build relationships with this horse.

They have a special bond, they come each week, they ride the same horse and you just watch these riders blossom and become confident riders.

(soft music) They get to know their volunteers as well and build those relationships.

I've seen riders who you know, struggle with their balance and the warmth of the horse.

They get to feel relaxes their muscles and they really work on that core strength.

And so just, there's been some amazing things that I've seen and I really grant it to the horses.

They're pretty special animals that really make a difference in the lives of all our participants.

(soft music) I hope it becomes more readily available.

There's such a weightless and a need in the community.

I want everybody to be able to experience the magic and the power of the horse.

- [Dave] In the northwest part of Reno lies Sierra Vista Park, a former golf course that now boasts a new mountain biking trail.

Thanks to the combined efforts of many people like Curtis Johnson of Biggest Little Trail Stewardship.

- We got involved here at Sierra Vista Park in the planning process when after it was a golf course and kinda went defunct.

The city went through a process to see what they were gonna do with the property, whether they can develop it or not.

And they kinda came to the conclusion that a park would be best.

So, we were able to get a recreational trail grant through Nevada State Parks.

And started building mountain bike trails within the park.

We're just a little over five miles of trails now and there's all sorts of different levels from a beginner mountain bike trails to advanced mountain bike trails and intermediate trails with jumps and drops and things like that.

The latest one we built is the adaptive trails and that was the donation from High Fives organization.

- High Fives is the safety net of the outdoor sports community.

It's nearing its 15 year in existence and we serve the outdoor sports community by trying to prevent life-changing injuries, but providing resources and hope if they happen in the outdoors.

'06 I was a skier that went too big on a jump and that jump led to a life-changing injury and that was the catalyst to start High Fives to help other people fall in the same shoes that I did.

I love mountain biking.

Mountain Biking's, one of the five disciplines that High Fives focuses on.

And you know, here in Reno, Tahoe, we have some of the best trails in the world.

And here at Sierra Vista Park, what this park is really about is getting family together, teaching people how to progress their mountain bike skills.

These are really quick short runs so it's really repeatable so you can get the idea of, hey, that didn't work last runner.

Hey, that worked really well let's try it again.

- [Dave] Steve Wentz of Momentum Trail Concepts designed and built the Adaptive Trail.

He had to do a little research first.

- The biggest learning process for me was riding the adaptive bike myself.

If I'm gonna say this trail's fun and it's safe and it's really good for you, I better be able to put myself in their shoes as well.

And so I did that.

High fives gave me the opportunity up at a bike park and also down here and that changed how I make corners for these riders.

They need something that's a little bit different at the start versus the end.

The bikes handle differently and that's also good for learning for other riders too.

- [Chris] So, how do you shape a curve for an adaptive rider?

- The curves for adaptive riders can be a little mellower at the start and then a little bit steeper at the end.

Some people will talk about this distance or that slope and those are important, but all I really care about is someone's experience on that trail.

And for these adaptive riders, I don't know if they've had people cater to what they can do, you know, and that's a really cool thing about what we've done here.

- [Dave] Steve is getting a lot of feedback today because the city's having an adaptive riding event to highlight the new park and give riders a chance to try out some new bikes.

(soft music) - I think the park's great.

It's awesome that you know, the city or the community has this, especially the it's adaptive accessible.

So I love it.

Well I've had a disability for 50 years and I've been adaptive cycling for probably five years.

- [Dave] Okay, has it changed in five years?

- It has a lot.

There's a lot new equipment from more companies that are giving us more options like able-bodied people have.

So, it's great to have more options and that's actually why I'm here is to check out more options.

These different bikes fit different people with different needs and it's just a style I wanted to try and see how it worked for me because I'm in the market for a new bike.

- [Dave] How important is it to try these out before you make a purchase?

- It's really important because they all feel so different.

And this one is the one of the least expensive and it's in the $12,000 range.

Most of 'em are in the, these days around 20 a little bit more.

- [Chris] So not something you're gonna jump into without trying?

- Right, yeah, buying these sight unseen would be a little risky.

These bikes are really more than bikes for a lot of us often.

I mean sometimes this is my mountain bike where I can go fast down trails and have fun and other times it's a hiking machine or something I can get out on dirt trails when we're walking our dog.

And so they're really more than bikes for most of us.

I don't know anybody who rides one of these that doesn't view it as much more than just a bike.

- We know that in the communities of mountain bike, ski and snowboard, surf, fish and then what we call dirt, which is motocross and UTV, we know there's natural communities that already exist.

So, if we can find adaptations equipment and individuals that are willing to just show up and try, then we get 'em reconnected with community and reconnected to a sport and getting a little bit of wind in their face too.

- So, and what is the importance of that reconnection?

- I mean, you know, we're best when we're around others and after a life-changing injury, it can become really isolating and you can also have that loss of identity.

And so if all of a sudden you can reconnect with something and call yourself a biker, or as we call everyone an athlete, which is just the term we use, it's like grantee recipient awardee, but athlete has an identity and so if you can give someone an identity again, they can get reconnected to a community and reconnected to friends.

- I got this bike from High Fives the end of August three years ago and then right after I got my bike, I found out there was a race at my local hill and I had my bike for eight days and went and entered a local race and I won that one and immediately was like stuck on it and sold on it to continue to keep racing.

And it gives me this just ultimate freedom that I can't even describe and put into words.

When I'm in my downhill bike, I go down double black driving trails.

My able-bodied friends and full downhill bikes are like, "I am not chasing you down that."

(bike revving) - We can't get very far off road in a wheelchair comfortably.

And these open up a whole world of cycling on everything from gravel roads to single track and all sorts of trails.

So, it really opens up our world for places we can go and explore and enjoy it on our own or with family and friends.

- If you build a good adaptive trail, it's way more fun to ride for everybody.

- I want people to feel a lot of excitement but actually be really safe.

And that balance is sometimes tough to get, but that's something I always wanna chase.

- I don't think there's many cities that have the type of adaptive program that Reno Adaptive put together and it's really great.

I drove three hours here for it.

(laughs) - [Chris] About 45 miles south of the park in Minden.

The team at Beneficial Designs is hard at work improving the future of adaptive opportunities.

- [Dave] Peter Axelson founded Beneficial Designs when his own life prompted him to design and build adaptive equipment.

- I was at the US Air Force Academy, gonna be a Navi guesser on a B1 experimental aircraft studying aeronautical engineering, got life got redirected when I had a training accident, a rock climbing accident.

And I was always an outdoor active person.

And so when I got training as an engineer, mechanical engineering and product design, smart product design, I started designing adaptive recreation equipment so I could get back outside.

- [Dave] That work resulted in the first sit ski, which made Peter a celebrity in the adaptive sports community.

Over the years Peter advanced the technology and then began to expand his focus beyond the gear.

- And then eventually realized that, hey, you know, there's more than just the stuff that I need, the assistive technology that I need to get out there.

It's just like, how can we make trails more accessible?

What are we gonna do about that?

Well, we don't want the whole wilderness paved and everything made flat and level.

We want to know where I can go and where I can't go.

And that's different for each person.

- [Dave] Peter joined a national advisory committee that studied outdoor recreation sites to create guidelines for trail assessment and years later beneficial designs builds upon that foundation by collecting and sharing data about trails.

Facilities Manager Bill Blythe explains.

- So, at each location we're measuring the distance, the grade, and the cross slope, the width of the trail, the surface type and the surface firmness.

So, this is our latest piece of equipment for gathering trail data.

It's our knee tap device or this is also known as a digital tread squared.

And so, we've got digital levels on there, two of them.

So, we're squared.

- Oh, I get you okay.

- you know, and a digital roll of wheel.

And so as we roll this down the trail, we stop and we've got three points of contact and we can look down and look at our angles on there and we can see that we're at, this one's pretty flat.

We go down the trail and till something on the trail changes, the grade, the cross slope, the surface type and the direction, if any of those things change, we stop and take station, we call it.

We found that the best way to present the information is on these type of things, which are like a food facts label.

It doesn't tell you if the food's any good or not, right.

It just tells you what it is.

And this is the same thing on the trail.

We're giving you the information about the trail and as an informed user, you can now look at that and make a decision whether that's right for you or not.

- [Dave] Where will we see these signs?

- [Bill] So, these signs you might find in a parking lot or at a trail head that's gonna tell you what you're gonna encounter ahead of time.

- [Dave] Of course once you get to the trail, you want to be confident your equipment can handle it.

So, beneficial designs puts adaptive gear to the test.

- So, we wanna make sure that we know what the limits of the equipment are and the strength and durability is really important.

So, we whack and smash and bang things.

You know, we do like high strength tests and then we do impact tests on things and durability on our drum tester where we run 200,000 cycles and we do drop tests where we drop things 7,000 times.

It's extremely brutal tests, but then the performance is really important.

It's just like testing cars really.

- [Dave] In another building we find a space dedicated to wheelchair stability.

They test them all manual or automated to determine whether they can handle the terrain they're designed to cover and do it safely.

- And so for manual wheelchairs, they don't have any dynamic tests because there's no scientific way to figure out how fast they should be going, right?

So, we put 'em on the static tilt platform and so we determine the maximum angle at which the wheelchair's still stable.

- [Dave] That looks like a tank.

- Yeah.

And so this is a track chair.

The first rearward stability test is to start on the slope and then to turn the power all the way up on the device so that it's at maximum speed and press the joystick forward.

Then once I get to the top of the ramp, drive full speed in reverse release the joystick.

And then note if the wheelchair goes to tip over or if wheels lift.

- We wanna make sure that the powered mobility and the manual wheelchairs are safe and durable for people using 'em in those environments.

More and more people are getting outside.

Our society is becoming more accepting of assistive technology.

I try to encourage people to think about how assistive technology is a positive thing for doing what they wanna do.

It's all about being able to get out into that environment.

So, using assistive technology that's needed to get out into those environments to realize you can still get around.

And so then people are, "Well hey, I can get a heavy duty scooter and I can go on this trail and get around and experience what other people are are seeing."

- It's great to see how adaptive technology has opened up access to so many places, - You know, and fascinating to learn the work behind it.

I've learned so much and I'm definitely gonna have a different perspective anytime I'm out on the trail.

- Yeah, me too, for sure.

Hope you've enjoyed coming along on this episode with us and I really hope that if you have mobility issues, that you take advantage of some of the opportunities in this area to get outside and have yourself a great day.

- If you wanna learn more about this or any of the "Wild Nevada" series, visit our website@pbsreno.org or watch with the PBS app.

- Until the next, while Nevada, was hoping you can find some adventure for yourself.

See you next time.

- I know I don't have the upper body strength for this today.

- Two red heads.

- [Chris] You are a star.

Well, it's not supposed to be raining yet, but here it is.

We got good stuff.

Yeah, we're getting booted out.

Run for your lives.

- [Narrator] Support for PBS, Reno and Wild Nevada comes in part from the William N. Pennington Foundation.

Bill Pennington was an entrepreneur, philanthropist, and gaming pioneer who built a legacy of community service in Nevada.

- [Narrator] Travel Nevada helps provide travel inspiration and experiences for those interested in creating their own wild Nevada adventures.

(upbeat music) For more information, visit travelnevada.com.

And by Millie Hopper and Millard Reed, Charles and Margaret Burback, Sande Family Foundation, Kristine Perry, Thelma B. and Thomas P. Hart Foundation, June S, wisham Trust, the Hall Family, Dillard and Meg Myers, Sarah and Leonard Lafrance in memory of Sue McDowell and by individual members.

(upbeat acoustic music)