Zion becomes first US National Park to offer free all-terrain wheelchair

Utah: Zion National Park has become the first among America’s national parks to offer an all-terrain wheelchair for disabled visitors to explore its canyon trails.

The equipment was made available through a charitable nonprofit – 2Live4 – which used donated funds to purchase the wheelchair.

The chair, manufactured by Extreme Motus, was delivered to Zion in July last year. Its development took almost two years.

Co-founder Ryan Grassley said he developed the chair model over 7 years while taking his friend Sam, who has cerebral palsy, to all but one of Utah’s National Park Service properties.

“When Kenny, Sam and I went to Zion to deliver the chair last year, the coolest thing happened,” Grassley recalled. “We were standing in front of the visitor center and telling the rangers how to use the chair, and a family walked by. They had a child that used a wheelchair, and the mom was like, ‘What is happening right now?’ We explained what we were doing, and the mom just started crying. It became immediately clear that having that equipment available was 100% the right thing to do.”

The service is now free for visitors on a first-come-first-served basis.