Ignite Your Spirit - A Disabled Ski Bum Story

Kevin Wilson is finally living his dream as a ski bum… 31 years after becoming disabled in a car accident. 

Let’s take it back to the beginning…

Kevin was the son of a high school football coach. As a child, all that mattered for Kevin was playing sports and going skiing. Athletics wasn’t so much what he did as who he was. He was an athlete.

He had dreams of going to college on a football scholarship and an adventurous back-up plan of becoming a raft guide in the summer and a ski guide in the winter if the college athletics opportunity didn’t pan out. However, all those dreams were shattered when Kevin was paralyzed in a car accident his junior year of high school. He thought he would never be able to live the life he wanted now that he was only able to move around in a wheelchair.

After high school Kevin struggled with alcoholism to numb the emotional and physical pain of what happened. It was difficult for him to land a job as somebody in a wheelchair since most jobs he wanted to do, and feel qualified for, were often discriminatory towards people with a disability. “You wouldn’t think it would happen as much as it does but there’s still discrimination in the workforce towards people in a wheelchair. It was definitely harder to find a job, and given my behavior and mental health in my early 20s, it was equally difficult to keep one.” He started to gain weight and was not happy with who he was.

The turning point was at a regular check up with his doctor where they prescribed Kevin pain medicines, ones that are quite addictive and would require Kevin to stay on them for the rest of his life. 

“I asked the doctor if I could not take the painkillers and start to eat better and exercise again and attempt to feel better. The doctor told me that would definitely help almost people don’t wanna do that and I thought to myself ‘ well, I’m not most people.’” Kevin decided it was time to make a change. He stopped drinking alcohol altogether, he gave up fast food and he began to exercise again.

Kevin was living in Dallas, Texas at the time he decided to start start a regular exercise routine. In those hot summer days he would roll to the parking garage in the city and push himself in his wheelchair from the bottom to the top. Once he arrived to the top of the parking structure, he would get in the elevator and ride back down - then do it again and again and again. He would never take the car around Dallas but choose to roll to the bus stop and opt for the uncomfortable and awkward physical struggle of getting around the city on public transportation with a wheelchair.

As he predicted, his spirits lifted and his life began to turn around. In Texas,  he joined a community of adaptive sports athletes through the nonprofit Turning Point where he tried outdoor recreational activities for the first time since his accident. After his experiences fishing, kayaking, and even water skiing, he saw an opportunity to become a part of an athlete community again through these adaptive sports programs. He tried wheelchair basketball, wheelchair tennis, he would even go to the skate park in a wheelchair and drop in. “For able-bodied people all they have to do is pick up a basketball and pair of shoes then they can play in a league. For us, it’s pretty cost prohibitive. We have to get a specific wheelchair to play basketball and a different tailored piece of equipment for tennis. It gets pretty expensive and that can be a big barrier of entry for people.”

While living in Dallas, Kevin and his wife Patty took a vacation to Colorado where Kevin’s eyes were opened to what was possible for him. He thought back to all those times as a kid skiing with his dad, riding the chairlift with friendly strangers and the feeling of the snow under his feet and decided that the mountains was where he wanted to be. He was determined to make the mountains his life again despite some looming questions that remained unanswered… “can you even live in the mountains in a wheelchair? What do I do when it snows?”

Shortly after their vacation, they moved to the mountain town of Gold Hill, Colorado - population 204. Kevin began working for an outdoor industry brand as a customer service representative where he had worked for about nine years in total. For Valentine’s Day a few years ago, his wife Patty gifted Kevin an opportunity to take ski lessons through Ignite, an adaptive ski sports nonprofit located at Eldora Ski resort just 30 minutes from their home in Gold Hill. Skiing was Kevin’s truest joy as a child and he found that joy again.

After a few more lessons with Ignite Adaptive Sports he saw a job posting - Ignite was hiring their first full-time employee who would run the ski school for people with disabilities to learn winter sports. 10 minutes after he saw the job posting Kevin had his application in, “It’s what I was made to do. I did customer service and logistics for 10 years and to think I could do this for a place that teaches people like me how to ski and give that joy to others - I thought I was the perfect fit.”

Kevin was right. He was the perfect fit. So, in August 2021 he began working as the only paid employee of Ignite Adaptive Sports, one of the largest adaptive ski sports programs in the country. As a mostly volunteer-led organization, they provide outdoor sports enthusiasts of all ages and disabilities to take part in their program. “Our dedicated volunteer network donates between 15,000 – 20,000 hours (worth more than $350,000 according to The Independent Sector) of their time and energy each year to provide private snow sport lessons to hundreds of people living with disabilities in Colorado.” Ignite currently offers alpine and cross-country skiing, snowboarding, ski biking, and snowshoeing opportunities. 

It’s finally come full circle for Kevin. With such an active childhood, he felt that his identity as an athlete was going to be forever. Now, after all these years, he’s living his dream. “I go to bed every night with a huge smile on my face wondering how this happened to me. I work at a ski resort and live 5 miles away in the town, and get to ski every day. I’m doing exactly what I dreamed of 31 years ago.” 

Connect with the filmmaker

Roo is a commercial/documentary filmmaker and photographer based in Boulder, Colorado but travels all around the world for his filmmaking career. He has produced films for Outside Magazine in Ireland, camera operated for Netflix in the Rocky Mountain West, photographed among indigenous communities in Peru and Ecuador, directed videos with professional climbers in Mexico and has received notable recognition in his hometown of Orcas Island in Washington State for his work telling uplifting stories in the outdoor space.

If you have questions or want to talk more about my life as a Boulder cinematographer, adventure photography, adventure filmmaking please reach out! I always love connecting with new people and talking through how I can help them achieve their dreams in telling stories of impact.