The chair that goes where the wheelchairs stop

For seven years, Sam Durst has crossed slickrock, snowfields and sand in a six-foot chair his childhood friend Ryan Grassley pushes from behind. Now Zion National Park owns one of those chairs outright — the first U.S. national park to do so — and lends it out free at the visitor centre.

Durst, who is 43 and has cerebral palsy, and Grassley have been friends since they were boys. In 2019 they took an early version of the chair to Delicate Arch in Arches National Park — a climb that ends on open slickrock, no path to speak of. They have since gone to Bryce Canyon, up snow, and, on one occasion, into an indoor trampoline park. More than 400,000 people follow the account where they post the footage.

Grassley co-founded Extreme Motus, the Payson, Utah company that builds the chairs. The original design came from Dale Pitts, a retired Provo firefighter. The production model carries a Kirkey aluminium racing seat of the kind bolted into stock cars, hydraulic disc brakes on both rear wheels, and a frame that folds down once two pins are pulled. It floats in shallow water.

The chair is not motorised. It needs a second person walking behind, leaning into the grades, and both rider and pusher take a short training session before setting out. It works on the Pa'rus Trail, the Riverside Walk, Lower Emerald Pools and Weeping Rock. Because it will not fit on a shuttle bus, users are given an accessibility pass to drive the Zion Canyon Scenic Drive themselves during shuttle season.

The nonprofit 2Live4 raised the money for the park's chair. Kenny Jardine, Extreme Motus's chief business development officer, says the arrangement took close to two years to settle before the chair went into service in July. He is careful about the claim being made: other parks have all-terrain chairs on site, but those belong to outside nonprofits. This one belongs to Zion. Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Canyonlands and Arches are working toward the same.

Durst and Grassley have meanwhile started something of their own. The Outdoor Access Project, launched last year, runs an adaptive obstacle course called the Berserker Blitz at Cook Family Park in Pleasant Grove, organised with recreation director Megan Zollinger. Fifty children with disabilities came the first year, with their families. Organisers in Grand Junction and Tacoma have written to ask how to hold one.

What began as two friends deciding that a hard trail was not a good enough reason to stay home is now a piece of public equipment, kept and maintained by a park that receives close to five million visitors a year. It waits by the desk for whoever asks.