The National Ability Center’s operations at Park City Mountain have made the leap from 1,800-square-foot doublewide to 10,000-square-foot modern McGrath Mountain Center, and Saturday was the grand opening.
Oh yeah, tears were spilled, hugs were tight, and laughter dominated as a couple of hundred people including participants, their families, staff, community notables and plenty of plain ol’ community came to join the celebration.
Ski and Snowboard Program Director Brian Castillo passed through a gantlet of hugs on the second floor with a control tower’s view of the Park City Mountain base, while taking Brianna Heim and her family on a tour of the new building.
Brianna used what looks like a video game stick to steer her high-rise wheelchair. She’s skied with Castillo for the past 13 years, and he was her first instructor, said her father, Scott. He had retired from the military and looked forward to skiing with his daughter, too, this season.
They were amazed at the difference between old, crowded trailer with some sheds and the bright new space they were touring this day. Everyone seemed to be as they moved from room to room, taking it all in. Downstairs was busy and loud with people eating sandwiches or sweets, some with drinks, many greeting old friends from the program.
Park City Mountain donated the land, and Laurie McGrath provided a good deal of the funding and a letter that made Caitlin Bognaski, a military veteran, cry the first time she read it about McGrath’s earlier experiences with skiers with disabilities who shaped her interest and help with the National Ability Center. Bognaski is also the organization’s development director and she read the letter aloud for the crowd, since McGrath couldn’t attend in person.
Deirdra Walsh, head of Park City Mountain, spoke of partnership and awe of the work the National Ability Center’s staff does to make skiing and snowboarding accessible to people who wouldn’t have a chance otherwise.
“This building is the gold standard in adaptive snow sports facilities,” Walsh said. “And it’s right here in Park City, and it’s right here on Park City Mountain. I know all of the incredible memories and stories that came out of that doublewide, and I can only imagine how many more are going to be created out of this facility. It’s just incredible.”
Sixty-five to 80 adaptive ski instructors will work out of the center this winter. Much of the discussion, official and in conversation, had to do with life-changing experiences through the program, no cliche.
The star of the moment was Meeche White, who with Pete Badewitz got it all started back in 1985 and remains involved even with other projects going. Well, besides two children intent on their cotton candy, there at the center of things to lend an extra bit of perspective about what this is all about at root.
White started with talking about 1985, when she helped launch the program. Also, the International Special Olympics was at the ski mountain that year. She was in charge of the events then.
“There was this little spitfire of a guy who was 8 years old skiing all around,” she recalled. “He was too young to be in the games, but he wished he could, and he was so cute. And now he’s still here at the age of 47.”
With that a middle-aged man stepped into her arms and they had a long hug before she continued with more stories from the beginning.
“It’s about the families and the participants and the participation and the dignity that we can provide in our programs that has kept me going, has lit my fire to see lives change,” she said.
Later, Castillo held up a small rectangle of material that looked like white flocked artificial turf that would fill in a runway out to the snow from an equipment room that alone is the size of the doublewide that till now served as HQ for the whole operation.
He smiled. Yes, the spacious new quarters would take some getting used to.
He began in 2008, thinking a season or two before going to grad school and an advanced degree in occupational therapy, perhaps. But in talking with OTs and PTs, he soon enough learned he was doing much of the work already, no doubt the more fun parts. The financial meltdown around then also put a crimp in things. And so over time he worked his way up to his current position.
The cost of housing here may become a factor for he and his partner, Alyssa. That and he still goes back to his native northern Wisconsin for a couple of months in the summers, where he does much the same work with sea kayaks and such.
There are many great adaptive ski programs out there, including Aspen Challenge, Chief Program and Education Director Tracy Meier said. But the National Ability Center has broader programing beyond the snow sports, including a 26-acre facility in the Park City area with ropes course, mountain biking, horses, watersports and other summer activities and programs, and then river trips based out of Moab.
The full program served 5,400 people in the past year. The McGrath Mountain Center, big as it is, after all is just part of a greater whole.
