Tandem Hiker Enables Adaptive Outdoor Activities
By Mark Wilcox, Huckleberry Hiking
Huckleberry Hiking is pioneering a tandem hiker to keep families together for outdoor activities.
The Cascade Tandem Hiker system allows parents to break many of the physical barriers of enjoying time outside with a child who has special needs. It's a cart designed to allow a caregiver to haul a person weighing up to 150 pounds on single-track trails or uneven terrain like beaches while only feeling 25 percent of their weight. The system utilizes what's basically a backpacking backpack frame as a "Sherpa Harness" to link a parent to their child with a disability.
Go Inside the Journey to Get Families Back on the Trail
The tandem hiker includes hiking poles that double as a kickstand and a parking brake. That provides key stability for the single-wheeled cart while loading the child into the wide comfort-molded seat.
The seat is attached with a shock to a frame on a single 20-inch "fat wheel." The shock and the wide, soft wheel both help make the ride comfortable for the Huckleberry (passenger) while also enabling the cart to tackle rough terrain.
Once detached, the kickstands transform into hiking poles to aid the Sherpa with lateral stability. One pole also has a mechanical disc brake lever attached to the single wheel, allowing Sherpas to stay in control on descents and over obstacles.
Designed with an incredible array of body types and ability levels in mind, the system has an assortment of accessories to aid in everything from lateral head support to hauling a ventilator on the trail. As a piece of adaptive sports equipment, it's about as adaptable as they come.
The system goes from trunk to trail in two minutes with a simple assembly and disassembly process. In moments it transforms from a large-luggage sized package that can fly as a check-on bag to a hiking system that makes tackling trails possible for almost anyone.
Why Adaptive Equipment for Hiking is Needed
Parents who have children with a disability often opt out of hiking and their favorite outdoor activities. When they can opt in, they often divide and conquer so one parent goes out while the other stays home with their child.
Opting out means the entire family misses out on making memories and creating stories that will stay with them for a lifetime. Dividing and conquering, at least for the child, is even worse. They become the outcast even from their own family's fun; nearly a ghost in the family photo album.
LJ Wilde, a mechanical engineer who founded Huckleberry Hiking, couldn't accept either option for his family. Like many parents in this challenging situation, he adapted as best as he could. His daughter Luci has a rare genetic condition and uses a wheelchair. For the first 7 years of her life, when he took his family hiking, Luci tagged along in a child-carrying backpack.
But in 2019, she began complaining of saddle discomfort in the backpack. The last family hike they took, LJ draped Luci across his shoulders in the fireman's carry to Hidden Falls in Jackson Hole, Wyoming where he had grown up among the Tetons. Besides Luci's discomfort, LJ had already stretched his own physical limitations to carry her for so long. His body paid a painful price whenever he had to carry Luci.
"I thought it might be the last hike we ever took as a family," Wilde said. "I wasn't OK with that. And I dang sure wasn't going to leave Luci home."
Throughout that difficult hike, LJ tasked his engineering brain with keeping his family on the trails in the future. By the end of the expedition, he had already formulated the basic idea for the tandem hiker in his head.
Gathering [Trail] Dust
Motivated by plans for a dual-family backpacking trip with friends, LJ purchased raw materials to start the project. But as a man who serves in his church to a great degree, takes his employment seriously, and otherwise remains a family man to his six kids, life simply got in the way. The backpacking trip never materialized and the materials for the tandem hiker gathered dust in his garage. For 2.5 years.
They also got in the way in his limited garage space and stabbed him with pangs of guilt whenever he saw them. Sick of dealing with the weight of an unrealized project, he finally decided to get rid of the materials. He rationalized that freeing the mental and physical space would allow him to tackle practical projects like home modifications to better accommodate Luci's needs.
So he started loading the materials onto the trailer to haul to the dump where he could also scrap his guilt. But while stacking metal tubing on the trailer the words, "Don't do that! Just finish the dang thing," popped into his head.
Before long, his nearly discarded project consumed his midnight-oil hours until he had completed the first prototype of what would become the Cascade Tandem Hiker.
Testing the Trails
In a symbolic move, he took the first prototype Cascade Tandem Hiker back to Grand Teton National Park where he thought his family had taken their last hike together. Before they even hit the trail, a woman pushing a child in a wheelchair ran up to him shouting for him to wait. She wanted to know where to get one for herself.
LJ told her he built it from scratch in his garage. She asked if he'd build another for her. Sadly, he knew there was no time in his busy schedule to build another one.
"Building the first one nearly killed me," he said. "I built one. I thought I was done."
He and the disappointed mother parted ways and LJ headed onto the trail for a wonderful hike. The invention worked well, but Luci ferreted out improvements along the way.
The experience with the mother frantic to know where he got it began repeating itself.
Anywhere he brought the Cascade, he started meeting parents who couldn't live without it.
But his life was still too full to do anything to help them.
"I got thinking and decided I had four major commitments in my life: God, family, personal wellness (ie: sleep), and my job," he said. "And given the substantial amount of time I knew would be required to make this a possibility for others, I wasn't going to give up any of the first three."
So he jettisoned his employment and went all-in on Huckleberry Hiking.
During another trip to Jackson Hole, standing at the shore of Bradley Lake miles from the trailhead at the base of the Tetons, LJ recalled pointing out the incredible vistas to Luci.
LJ turned to his wife Jana and asked, "How many 11-year-old kiddos in wheelchairs have been able to experience this place?"
The answer at that point was "at least one," but LJ hoped at that point there would be many more in the near future.
What Users Think
Since LJ quit his job, Huckleberry Hiking has grown essentially with a will of its own. Preorders for the first production run for the Cascade Tandem Hiker sold out in four minutes flat in a presale event. Those first carts will ship in Q1 2024.
Early users and beta testers continue to help improve the product, but the general feedback speaks to how life-changing the new technology has been.
"The cart has been empowering for Krew to 'dare' to dream of seeing and doing new things he hasn't been able to do YET…" said Jami Hancey, a beta tester in Smithfield, Utah. "It has given me hope and encouragement to get outside to go to the places we couldn't go with a wheelchair. I've been feeling 'stuck' and this has been a real game-changer for our family."
Another testing family, the Tingeys, added that their son could get used to feeling "like a king" while his Sherpas haul him along the trail.
"He had zero complaints of discomfort and as a champion self-advocate, if he had discomfort at all he would not have hesitated to report it!" said Emily Tingey.
But it's the togetherness for families that really drives LJ and his crew at Huckleberry Hiking.
"How do I even put it into words?" Tingey said. "I genuinely feel it has allowed our family to *live* again after a year of survival mode due to our 12-year-old's decline in abilities as a result of his disease."
Emily said piling into the car to head into the mountains "all together" for the first time in a year put her whole family in the best mood they'd been in for a long time.
"After doing that first trail with our hiking buddies that we used to hike with once a week—that we honestly weren't sure we'd ever be able to do again—we felt recharged, refreshed and eager to do it again ASAP (which we did two days later!)" she said.
Other families feel similar.
"For the last 6 years we have had to 'divide and conquer'," said Maiya Dos. "One of us going out with our oldest while the other stays behind with our youngest. I do not think I could even express in words what it would mean to us to be able to hike together as a family again."
LJ said he and the team at Huckleberry Hiking would love nothing more than to give families the experiences that make those words impossible to express.
"These kiddos deserve to experience life to the fullest," LJ said. "It's our goal to help families break barriers and make memories. Together."
You can meet Huckleberry Hiking and see the Cascade Tandem Hiker system in person at Abilities Expo Los Angeles, March 15-17, 2024 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
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