Video: Adaptive Mountain Biking Day at Killington Mountain, Vermont

For the second time in as many years, High Fives athletes from all over the North East converged on Killington MTB Park for an epic day of shred therapy! High Fives is a non-profit organization that supports and empowers injured mountain sports athletes as they pursue an adaptive path back to the sports they love.



Mother nature came through with the bluebird skies and High Fives with the all-star crew.


Greg Durso and and Nick Fairall were the first riders to descend down the Snowshed side of the mountain. The terrain was perfect for the Reactive Adaptations Bombers, supplied by Vermont Adaptive, and afforded them lap after lap of enjoyable groomers.


The last time Lindsay Runkel rode at Killington was last years High Fives adaptive MTB day. She's known for shredding the knobs off her Sport-On Explorer 3...but this year Lindsey showed up to Killington with an Adaptive Mountain Bucket Bike that she built up with the help of friends and the MTB community. Thanks to a 1500W electric motor from Paradox Kinetics and a custom-mounted Aspen Seating bucket seat, she is back to riding her Devinci Wilson. "This is my fourth ride on the bike since building it," says Lindsay. "I'm feeling more and more confident every time I ride and having a blast! Next stop for me is Whistler BC for Crankworx!"


Turned out, it didn't matter what kind of wheels you were rolling on, as long as they were rubber side down.


Brooks Curran gets all the photo cred! He spent the day hiding in the woods to document the riders making their descents. In this case it was a first descent! Here we have Ryan McLaren experiencing his first day adaptive Mountain Biking. Looking good Ryan! Keep at it.


We were racing some afternoon clouds rolling down the hill, but we beat 'em.


This weekend was Ryan St. Lawrence's second in a row riding Killington. He competed in the FOX US Open the weekend prior, which included an adaptive DH race. Two High Fives Athletes on the podium!


"It was surreal riding behind Keenan for a lap" says program services director and High Fives Athlete #1, Steve Wallace. "To see all of the hard work Keenan put in this winter at the CR Johnson Healing Center payoff was beyond rewarding". To give you some insight as to how serious Keenan is about recovery, he relocated last winter from Vermont to California in order to take advantage of the services available to High Fives Athletes at the CR Johnson Healing Center in Truckee, CA.


High Fives events coordinator, Juicy Gina, was guilty of smiling all day long. In fact, that was the theme of the weekend: ear-to-ear, top-to-bottom grins.


Story time. "You guys should've seen how much air I got".