This story first appeared in The Outsider, the premium outdoor newsletter by Jason Blevins.
In it, he covers the industry from the inside out, plus the fun side of being outdoors in our beautiful state.
Whenever Sara Thinger would hike a 14er with her husband, Charles, one thought would stay with her, even after the Colorado Springs couple finished all 58 of the state’s highest peaks: How could we get Reed up here?
Reed Small is her son from a previous marriage, and by far the most adventurous out of her three kids. One, Sara said, prefers to hide in her tent, complain about the mosquitoes and read a book. Reed was an Eagle Scout. But Reed has spina bifida and uses a wheelchair, and his ability to enjoy the outdoors is limited. It’s unfair, Sara said, given how much Reed loves it outside.
“It drives me nuts,” Sara said. “I feel like we could have more accessibility in nature. Our conversations with Reed when we are disconnected from the world are my favorite times.”
Reed loves camping and traveling and skiing and snowmobiling and kayaking. He went whale watching in Alaska. He’s done zip lining. He’s willing, Sara said, to try anything. But hiking with Reed is nearly impossible: Wheelchairs don’t come with 4WD, and pushing his rig over the inevitable rocks, roots and the ups and downs would be like taking a Toyota Camry four-wheeling in Ouray. They are stubborn, Sara said, and make things happen, but Reed rarely gets to venture beyond a trailhead.
And yet, that’s essentially what the Lockwood Foundation took on the weekend of Aug. 24, when the nonprofit helped Reed to the summit of Pikes Peak. No, the organization didn’t drive him up, or even cheat a little by pushing him up the paved road. Dozens of volunteers took him from the parking lot to the top, via the Barr Trail.
Sure, Sara and Charles could drive Reed there, but the thought of that was blasphemous. They met at church and their first date was the remote 14er San Luis in 2011 — when their friends ditched them and they hiked to the top together. They played coed softball together, and found a spark in a mutual love for the mountains. They got married a year later. Reed was 7. Charles graciously redid 20 of the 14ers with Sara, and they finished in 2019.
“Do you not realize the point of hiking?” Sara said. “It’s about the experience. It’s not just being on the summit. It’s the struggle and then the reward.”
Lockwood’s mission is to expose people such as Reed to the outdoors, and taking wheelchair users up 14ers is a part of that. But they’d never done Pikes Peak before. Relative to other fourteeners, Pikes Peak is gentle — the Barr Trail winds all the way to the top, and its path is smooth enough that there’s a marathon on it every year. But it’s also one of the longest and most arduous trips up. It’s a half-marathon to the top, with 8,000 feet elevation gain. Many 14ers don’t require half that elevation to reach their tops.
Pikes Peak, though, was a romantic choice for Sara and Charles. They look at it every day, the backdrop to life in Colorado Springs. Pikes was the first 14er Charles climbed, in 1999, after moving to the Springs. Charles and Sara were married on the summit, riding the Cog Railway to the top before saying their vows.
More than once, the thought of getting Reed up there had crossed their mind. Wouldn’t it be great if Reed’s first fourteener could be Pikes?
The trail less traveled
Jeffrey Lockwood was a mountain guide with a background in caregiving who planned to go to law school. He saw a different path on Mount Blue Sky with Zara Vargues.
Lockwood, who’d worked as a caregiver since 2012, had Vargues as a client. She has cerebral palsy, meaning her mind was as sharp as anyone’s, but her body wouldn’t cooperate, and over breakfast, while he fed her, she would ask to see videos of him climbing mountains. One day, she said she wished she could do that.
Lockwood drove her up Mount Blue Sky to the end of the paved road and, with the help of a friend, carried her chair up the final few hundred feet on the trail to the summit. It nearly killed him, but Vargues’ smile wiped the pain away. It was a career-changing moment. THAT’S what he wanted to do.
Vargues just so happened to have experience with nonprofits for those with disabilities as the executive director of Ms. Wheelchair Colorado. She even had a degree in nonprofit studies. She became an early champion of Lockwood’s idea, and when he founded it in 2018, she became the first board member.
As magical as that moment was on Mount Blue Sky, Lockwood knew it was sort of cheap, too. No 14ers finisher with any ethics would count it as actually climbing the mountain. He wanted to get Vargues up a 14er the proper way. He asked adaptive recreation leaders, who all said it would be too hard. He found a Trailrider chair that could handle a trail but had to be human powered. Lockwood found poetry in that. He spent his first year raising money through events, 4×4 adventures and finding ways for those with disabilities to enjoy hiking. The nonprofit bought its first chair In 2019.
That same year, they tried to summit Quandary, a steep but gentle peak with a trail all the way. They made it just 200 feet below the summit when the weather turned iffy, and they made the painful decision to turn around. Lockwood said it was a conservative decision: An able-bodied person probably could have run to the top, tagged it and gotten down in plenty of time. But if Vargues had been soaked, hailed on or even killed, it not only would have devastated Lockwood, it would have devastated any chances of anyone else in a chair to get on a summit.
“We didn’t want to give the impression that wheelchair users shouldn’t be on a mountain,” Lockwood said.
A year later, Lockwood and a host of volunteers got Vargues to the summit of Mount Elbert. She became, they think, the first wheelchair user to reach the top of Colorado’s tallest mountain. She cried and so did everyone else. The next year, in 2021, they brought up another wheelchair user.
Since then, they have brought at least one wheelchair user up a 14er, including Chris Layne, a nurse and board member, in 2023. They have also brought four others up a 12,000-foot mountain and one 13er and have helped dozens more go on hikes throughout Colorado.
Lockwood calls the summit climbs “different than inclusion.”
“They feel like they belong on the mountain,” Lockwood said.
“It’s passive participation, yes, but in the backcountry, it’s very normal to help someone,” Lockwood said. “You might carry a backpack or a water bottle for someone. Others might show you the way up. That’s just the mountains.
“The idea is that we are on this hike together. We don’t feel like we are serving. We are climbing a mountain together.”
Halfway up Pikes Peak was just as hard
Even making it halfway to Barr Camp was a milestone for Reed.
The trek was by far the most Reed’s ever done on a trail. Barr Camp is 6.5 miles and nearly 4,000 feet of elevation gain, or the amount you’d spend hiking up many other 14ers. It takes five hours.
The next day, on Aug. 25, nearly 75 people helped get Reed to the top.
After they got married, when they could carry him, Sara and Charles would backpack with Reed. But he’s a 19-year-old man now.
The Trailrider has a single wheel, with someone up front pulling, much like a mule with a plow. This was why the effort took so many people: It’s hard enough to hike a 14er, especially as the air gets increasingly harder to breathe — even without carrying a chair with a person strapped in. Dozens need to swap turns huffing and puffing their way up.
Staying at Barr Camp, though, is a luxury resort compared to any other 14er. They serve breakfast, provide small beds and sell Skittles. The group left this relative paradise at 5:30 a.m. under headlamps. That morning, Lockwood went through a final plan, and he mentioned something about getting Reed to the top. Reed corrected him.
“Everyone needs to get to the top,” Reed said. “Not just me.”
The Barr Trail is gentle in comparison to Longs Peak or many other 14ers, but it’s still rocky, with tight sections that weave around boulders and through trees. Other hikers in the back helped the chair work around the obstacles. Sara watched the hikers strain to lift her son over a stray rock or boulder, and early on, it brought tears to her eyes.
“I started getting emotional as soon as we started,” Sara said. “Just seeing the 40 or so volunteers, they didn’t even know who they were helping, and it didn’t matter.”
It was a relatively warm morning, which was nice, considering that Reed was exposed in the chair. He wore a down jacket at the start. He was a passenger, but it wasn’t an easy trip for him: Contents may shift during hike.
The trail flexed a little at the very end, as it wound up the 16 Golden Stairs. Each “stair” is a switchback and the trail becomes more of a climb than a walk. Reed’s abs began to ache from trying to stabilize himself as the hikers jostled him up and over the angry rocks.
“I don’t remember the trail being that bad,” Sara said. “But it’s different when you take a chair up.”
Inspiration to bag another peak
The summit of Pikes is a busy place, with cars aggressively angling for parking spots and pedestrians hoping for a doughnut in the gift store. Hikers are uncommon and stand out. So it was a bit of a show when the train of hikers carrying a guy in a chair took their last steps to the summit. The gathering crowd cheered as they crested the top.
It was such a different way to enjoy a mountain, both Sara and Charles said, but it might be their favorite trip up one.
“It was such a community at the end,” Sara said. “We were exchanging numbers.”
Lockwood said his foundation has more plans for bigger hikes next year. Mount Antero, with its long 4WD road, is a possibility, he said. The organization has four chairs now and wants to use them up big peaks, not just hikes. He’s hoping to continue to get more volunteers for the long weekends.
Sara, Charles and Reed were inspired by the trip and have their own plans too. They are looking into buying a lighter version of the chair. They won’t go up any 14ers by themselves, but now, for the first time, they see the possibility of Reed enjoying the spaces that stretch beyond the trailhead.
