On a chilly spring Saturday morning, Quinn Brett maneuvered her way through snow and downed trees in the Indian Peaks Wilderness on her hand cycle. She was training to complete the White Rim Trail, a 100-mile route through Utah’s Canyonlands National Park, over the course of just one day.
And on March 29, she did just that. Accomplishing something big, as usual—a physically and mentally demanding challenge in a national park is right up Brett’s alley.
The White Rim has gotten a lot of attention lately for fastest known time (FKT) attempts in the wake of so many canceled events. In addition to checking a physical feat off her list, another goal Brett hoped to achieve in completing the White Rim was advocating for more accessibility on public lands.
The 40-year-old, who lives in Estes Park, Colorado, and works for the National Park Service in wilderness, accessibility, and outdoor recreation, fell over 100 feet while climbing on El Capitan in Yosemite National Park in 2017 and sustained a spinal cord injury, leaving her currently paralyzed from the waist down.
Brett has always, and will continue to always take on huge adventures—she seems most comfortable when she’s pushing her body to its limits. Before her injury, Brett was an accomplished rock climber, triathlete, and mountain biker, so life on wheels isn’t new to her. Brett also uses the hand cycle on trails that she used to only hike or run on.
Her hand cycle, which is battery powered to help her get up and over challenges on trails, enables her to get to places she’s always enjoyed. In exploring more and more with the off- road hand cycle, Brett has found places that are unintentionally accessible.
“My favorite hiking trail in Rocky Mountain [National Park] is Longs Peak,” Brett told Bicycling. “I’ve found that most trails in national parks that have stock use—that are used for horses or llamas—they are naturally wider. And those trails were built wide enough by the trail builders so that if there are horses using them, a person can still pass.” Brett goes up to the boulder field on the Longs Peak trail, which is at treeline, to find real solitude.
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Brett says the hand cycle is both similar to and different from traditional mountain biking.
“I find that my arms get tired and my chest gets tired and my neck gets tired from looking up all the time.”
But the motor helps to keep her from all-out physical exhaustion. The mental side is similar, too, Brett said, but instead of looking for her line the way she did on a mountain bike, she’s now thinking about other things.
“I’m always thinking about the tipping aspect. If there’s any sort of side slope I’m thinking, ‘Great, I’m going to tip and roll all the way down the mountain.’”
None of Brett’s off-road hand cycling adventures would be possible without Jake O’Connor, founder of ReActive Adaptations. O’Connor himself was involved in a construction accident in 2001 that broke his spine. He was an outdoorsman before the accident, and when he started using a wheelchair, he began to miss his solo adventures in the backcountry to fish and hike.
A few years after his accident, a friend let O’Connor use his off-road hand cycle—one of the first models ever created. He was hooked.
“It’s really difficult to get way back in the backcountry just in a wheelchair,” he said. “But, not with an off-road hand cycle.”
O’Connor had some ideas for a new model of bike that would allow him to get even farther into the wilderness alone. He started fabricating his own bikes, and others took note. He got requests for bikes similar to the one he had created for himself, so he started his company 11 years ago. Among other alterations, O’Connor developed a unique handlebar system that allows riders to feel like they’re on a regular mountain bike and able to take on seriously rugged terrain.
“I’ve built bikes for all kinds of people—paraplegics, quadriplegics, people with multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, just about anything you can imagine.”
When Brett was still in the hospital after her fall in 2017, a friend ordered her a bike from O’Connor. “My friend said, ‘You’re going to need this,’” Brett said.
In her experience on the trails, Brett has heard a lot of things that prove to her that people need more education on accessibility. She has both been treated like what she’s doing—just being out on a trail—is inspirational, and on the flip side, that she shouldn’t be there at all.
“I just want to be treated like I’m normal. When I’m out on my hand cycle, I don’t want to hear that I’m such an inspiration. Or sometimes I hear things like, ‘What is it, arm day?’ And my personality is such that I don’t like being pinpointed as so obviously different. I used to put earbuds in when I’d run and not listen to music, I just didn’t want anyone to talk to me.”
Brett says that differently abled people are just people—out on the trail, trying to enjoy the wilderness. They’re not inspiration, and they don’t need commentary because they’re using the trail in a slightly different way than others.
Brett is working now in education and advocacy in national parks, in terms of the legality of hand cycles—you can use them anywhere on the trails if they meet certain criteria—and inclusion of all people. Brett says that many times it just takes minor changes or additions to trails to make the outdoors more accessible for everyone.
“We want solitude and more grueling outdoor experiences, rather than the one-mile paved trail that we’re given—and that doesn’t mean that you have to pave a trail up to Longs Peak,” she said. “I’m just trying to advocate for awareness of small tweaks to trails that would make a huge difference in terms of usability, while not changing the character of the wilderness experience.”
One thing that keeps Brett interested in pushing the limits is that it’s too easy to be stalled by what society thinks it means to be in a wheelchair—or be differently abled in general. One of her goals now that she has completed the White Rim is to take on the Tour Divide Trail—the entire length of the Rocky Mountains, which is 2,745 miles from Canada to the Mexican border. For that, she imagines using her Bowhead Reach Adventure e-bike, which she says is “like a freaking bat mobile.”
Brett has also talked with engineers about a collapsible wheelchair that can be brought along for bikepacking.
“No one has created anything like that yet, so Tour Divide will probably have to be supported. I think I could go two or three days with no wheelchair and no shower, just living off of the bike, but going into a town or getting a hotel, it would be advantageous [to have a wheelchair].”
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Brett’s advice for others who want to get into more adventurous activities—especially with off-road hand cycles—is to reach out to the community.
“Instagram was really helpful for me to find people who had been injured and still got into the wilderness. I’m also trying to work with Strava and TrailForks to get resources more available to people—it’s not that hard to include a lens for adaptive machines.”
Brett says that a trail rating system for hand cycles and other adaptive equipment is also necessary, so that people know where they can go and what it will be like for them.
In addition to Rocky Mountain National Park, Brett has been having conversations with rangers at other national parks, such as Yosemite, Zion, and Saguro National Park.
Brett has been playing in national parks for as long as she can remember, and she’s using her connections now to talk about things just a little differently, in terms of accessibility and making tweaks that will allow more people to enjoy the land. In a lot of ways, Brett is perfect for this job—she knows the parks and the land so well, and now she knows what needs to happen in order for those places to be more welcoming to everyone.
