Chris Brodbeck was 16 years old when he lost his leg below the knee in a motorcycle wreck, an accident that changed his life in an instant and charted a pioneering course that would help introduce the world to adaptive snowboarding.
It was 1988, and Brodbeck, a junior in high school, had spent the past few years riding at Hoodoo Ski Area in the Cascade Range of Oregon, stoking a passion for snowboarding that he didn’t want to see fade away after the loss of his leg, the circumstances around which he can still remember in Technicolor detail.
“I had these custom Vans on, and after the truck hit me, I was lying on the ground and I looked over and saw my shoe probably 10 feet away. I was like, ‘Why is my shoe over there? On my leg?’” he recalled. “I was so out of it.”
“The doctors told me I could never snowboard again.”
The following winter, on opening day at Hoodoo, Brodbeck and two friends convinced their parents to sign permission slips excusing them from school and headed to the mountain with their snowboards.
For Brodbeck, who became the world’s first amputee snowboarder on that snow-choked day of powder turns and truancy, his defiance of the doctor’s orders would help shape his future, as well as the world of adaptive snowboarding.
But it wouldn’t be easy.
At the time, snowboard technology was in its incipient stages, and Brodbeck wore Sorel boots over his prosthetic, hoping that it wouldn’t pop off while riding the chairlift or mid-turn on the slopes — a far cry from the prosthetic technology available to amputee snowboarders today.
“It was definitely intimidating,” he said. “Back then, there weren’t a lot of snowboarders period, let alone amputee snowboarders. It was kind of a do-it-yourself kind of thing.”
Not sure where to begin, Brodbeck began plying adaptive athletic events around the region, searching for other amputee athletes.
“It was a very limited pool,” he said.
As he progressed as a snowboarder, Brodbeck began seeking out competitions, including the Ski Spectacular in Breckenridge, Colorado, one of the nation’s largest winter sports festivals for people with disabilities.
The only snowboarder competing, Brodbeck wore his snow pants cuffed to reveal his prosthetic leg to other athletes.
“I wanted people to know that you could do this as an amputee,” he said. “That it was possible.”
Last week, as testament to how much that possibility has widened, Brodbeck joined a clutch of other adaptive athletes for a powder camp in the Montana backcountry through DREAM Adaptive Recreation, which offers a more-advanced backcountry opportunity for riders and skiers like Brodbeck and his peers.
The group embarked on a five-day adventure that took them up and down the slopes of Big Mountain at Whitefish Mountain Resort; to a wilderness classroom for an avalanche-education course; to Hot Springs for a therapeutic soak; and, finally, to the remote backcountry near the Canadian border, where they loaded into snowcat machines and searched out untracked lines with the guides at Great Northern Powder Guides and the volunteers with DREAM.
“For an amputee, there’s a lot of value in what DREAM is doing with the camp, just getting people out for such a unique experience,” Brodbeck said.
DREAM, which stands for Disabled Recreation Environmental Access Movement, is a Flathead Valley-based nonprofit started in 1985 and dedicated to helping people with disabilities access, engage with, and enjoy outdoor recreation. DREAM’s typical winter program includes a chance for people with disabilities to learn to alpine ski or snowboard at Whitefish Mountain Resort, generally covering a spectrum running from beginner to intermediate.
DREAM executive director Cheri DuBeau Carlson said the program’s expansion last year to include the new powder program for advanced adaptive skiers has been a goal since she learned of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort’s Steep and Deep Adaptive Camp.
“I thought, ‘Why can’t we be doing this?’” she said.
When considering the new camp, which debuted in 2016, Carlson turned to Lucas Grossi for assistance and to draw from his expertise.
Grossi, a Montana native who lives in Whitefish, lost his left leg below the knee in a car crash in 1988, when he was 12 years old. It didn’t keep him from the mountains, though — Grossi ski raced until he was 16, and then started snowboarding in 1992. His passion took him to the competitive circuit, where he competed from 1999 until 2014. He trained for the 2014 Paralympics in Sochi, Russia, but was injured in 2012 prior to making the team.
Grossi also helped coordinate the first adaptive snowboard competition in the world, which took place in New Hampshire, and worked for a decade to make adaptive snowboarding a viable sport. He’s organized training camps for adaptive riders, including at Windells in Mount Hood, Oregon and High Cascade Snowboard Camp, in Government Camp, Oregon.
With its new powder camp, Grossi said DREAM is the first program in Montana to have such an advanced option for adaptive athletes.
“This camp helps people with disabilities find other adaptive riders and skiers who are really pushing themselves and to see what’s possible,” he said. “These guys have been swapping advice about prosthetics and gear and building camaraderie.”
Of the five attendees backcountry skiing, three were amputees who rode adaptive snowboards — Brodbeck, 45, of Bend, Oregon; Jay Mayfield, 38, of San Diego, California; and Seth Pack, 25, of Salt Lake City, Utah.
Jason Sellars, 31, a U.S. Marine from Sun Valley, Idaho who suffered a traumatic brain injury during combat missions in Iraq, including the Battle of Fallujah, and who now endures post-traumatic stress disorder, said camps like the DREAM event are his medicine.
“The cool thing about these camps is it builds a community that you can’t find anywhere else,” Sellars said. “It’s a huge tool in the toolbox for injured vets. For a lot of us, outdoor recreation is our therapy.”
The lone monoskier to attend the camp was Odie Pierce, 23, of Teton Valley, Idaho, who was born missing his spinal cord from the T-4 to L-2 vertebrae, making him a “T-4 paraplegic complete.”
At age 12, he learned to use a bi-ski at Whitefish Mountain Resort on Big Mountain before trying a monoski, a device with a single ski mounted to a chair, allowing him to carve.
“I was completely hooked after that,” said Pierce, who also attended last year’s backcountry powder camp, and recently showed off his acumen on the monoski, bouncing through pillow lines.
Grossi, who for years was the only adaptive snowboarder in Montana and is currently one of the top adaptive snowboarders in the country, said the fellowship the camp builds is gratifying.
During the trip to Hot Springs, where attendees soaked in the mineral pool at Symes, which Grossi frequents, he described his usual routine of sitting down in one of the available chairs to remove his leg. During the group’s visit, all of the chairs were taken while others did the same thing.
“As an amputee or as a person with a permanent disability, you function in a world that is slightly different than everyone else’s,” Grossi said. “That kind of put me in my place and made me realize that there are others who share my world, too.”