Before paddles hit the water, Cathy Webster was already at work.
After hauling a handful of kayaks from her trailer to a boat launch at Fish Creek Campground, Webster lifted each boat onto a set of rubber wheels—the first step in her practiced technique for getting kayakers onto the water.
"Someone may show up here in a power wheelchair who needs to be lifted," said Webster. "Once we get them into a kayak, they're completely independent."
Webster directs a kayaking program for the Northeast Disabled Athletic Association, a volunteer-run nonprofit based in Vermont that offers adaptive sports for people with disabilities. For the past 11 summers, she's led kayaking trips around the Northeast, including this year's four-day excursion around the Adirondacks.
When she is not leading trips, Webster works as a physical therapist. Her introduction to adaptive kayaking came through a client who is quadriplegic.
"I'd been treating her for 10 years," said Webster. "One day she said, 'Can we go kayaking?' And I'm like, 'Yeah, let's go.'"
Webster said the early days of leading the program required a lot of out-of-the-box thinking. Depending on a person's physical abilities, paddling can present major barriers — from getting into a kayak on land to staying balanced and paddling on the water.
Webster began searching online for adaptive kayaking equipment, piecing together tools for the specific needs of each paddler. Since then, she has built a fleet of boats outfitted with high-back seats, pontoon-style outriggers and hull-mounted angled paddles.
"What I really feel that's important for my participants is to empower independence and figure out some sort of device that can allow them to safely paddle independently," she said. "I'll do whatever I need to do as far as manufacturing and fiddling with things to make that happen."
From land to water
At the boat launch, Webster helped Chelsea Scheefer transfer from her wheelchair into a kayak.
Scheefer is paralyzed from the waist down, and she said getting into the boat is the biggest barrier she faces when kayaking.
Webster propped a transfer platform over the kayak. The stable surface, fitted with grab rails, allowed Scheefer to slide from her wheelchair into the boat. Once Scheefer was seated, Webster removed the platform and prepared the kayak for launch.
"What she had, which was kind of like this magician's trick, was amazing," said Scheefer.
Webster then rolled the kayak down the gradual, sloped put-in on a set of rubber wheels, similar to launching a motorboat. Once the boat was submerged, she pulled the wheels out from underneath it and made a few final adjustments.
From there, Webster left the rest of the journey to each paddler.
"It's unbelievable. It's life-changing. They're free," Webster said. "One reason I don't have tandem kayaks is that I want them to experience that hands-off, away-from-helpers opportunity."
An independent paddle
Out on the water, Scheefer's setup looked different from some of the other kayaks Webster offered. Her kayak lacked outriggers for stability, and she used a standard double-bladed paddle, allowing her to move through the water under her own power.
"Being where you can hear the water, you can be amongst nature in these very remote places that often somebody with a disability like myself that uses a wheelchair, you wouldn't have access to," Scheefer said.
Scheefer, who lives in Peru, regularly paddles on nearby Chazy Lake. For her, kayaking offers more than a way to reach places that might otherwise be inaccessible. Even though she is used to navigating the world in a wheelchair, she said being in a kayak offers her a brief chance to blend in.
"You still at times just want to be amongst everybody else," she said. "You just want to blend into the scenery. You don't want to be on display. You just want to be amongst the community in a way that clears the slate."
For Kristina Parker, the adaptive equipment itself made a difference. Parker, who lives in West Chazy, has cerebral palsy and uses a walker on land. On the water, her kayak was fitted with outriggers on either side for stability, along with an angled paddle system fixed to the boat.
"It makes it go from something that feels like the Olympics to something enjoyable," Parker said. "I can relax and enjoy it."
Before kayaking, Parker became involved in adaptive ice skating and skiing during the pandemic as a way to get out of the house. Trying those sports, she said, changed how she thought about what was possible for people with disabilities in the outdoors.
Parker said many outdoor accessibility initiatives focus on infrastructure upgrades, adding features such as ADA-accessible ramps, boat launches, parking spaces and bathrooms.
"It is so much more than that," she said. "We live in an area with lakes, rivers, bike paths, and it's all accessible if you think outside the box."
Webster said that kind of thinking is central to her program: adapting the equipment to the person rather than expecting the person to adapt to the equipment.
"Out of all the people that have approached me over the years, there's nobody I've had to turn away and say, 'We can't do this,'" she said. "The possibilities, I feel, are endless, and I think it's just a little bit of out-of-the-box thinking as far as what you can do to make somebody independent."
David Escobar is a Report For America Corps Member. He reports on diversity issues in the Adirondacks through a partnership between North Country Public Radio and Adirondack Explorer.
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