Revolutionary all-terrain wheelchair passes first trail test with flying colors.
Geoff Babb with his wife Yvonne on Geoff’s first venture onto Central Oregon Trails | photo by Michelle Simmons.
The AdvenChair, a new all-terrain wheelchair developed entirely in Bend, Oregon, left its first tire tracks on local trails this month. Now, the company founded by fire ecologist Geoff Babb faces the challenge of making the product gain traction with the millions of people throughout the country who use wheelchairs, and are typically left stranded at the trailhead when friends and family want to go for a hike.
Since surviving a life-threatening brain stem stroke in 2005, Babb has relied on a highly modified wheelchair with mountain bike tires and handlebar brakes to get off the beaten path. His original primitive version of the “AdvenChair” served him well until he and a team of a dozen friends attempted to reach the bottom of the Grand Canyon via the rugged Bright Angel Trail in 2016. The hundreds of water bars on the trail completely destroyed the bearings on the chair within the first two miles.
The team somehow managed to get Babb back up to the rim safely and he soon went back to the drawing board with his design crew – helicopter mechanic Dale Neubauer and CAD designer Jack Arnold – to create a whole new chair made with high-grade aluminum framing, a seat that adjusts to children as well as adults, adjustable handlebars, beefy 27.5” tires and durable mountain bike components. Unlike other wheelchairs, the human-powered AdvenChair is designed to be efficiently and comfortably pushed by one person or towed by two to four people.
When Babb’s crew began assembling the new AdvenChair 2.0 at Neubauer’s HeliLadder shop on an early December afternoon, it was like Christmas had come early. Not even sub-freezing temperatures could keep Geoff and his wife Yvonne from taking it out for a test ride.
“We are extremely excited about having the first working prototype out of the shop and on the trail,” said Geoff. “We found some things to fix, but overall I’m quite pleased with the prototyping process at this point, as our concept is now a reality.”
Geoff’s wife Yvonne, who typically does most of the AdvenChair driving, concurs: “The difference between the AdvenChair 2.0 and the original version is like night and day,” she says. “It’s much more agile, yet extremely solid.”
With more than three million wheelchair users in the United States alone, Geoff Babb is anxious to offer the new AdvenChair to the public in 2019 through his company’s website advenchair.com. But he knows they still have their work cut out for them before that can happen.
“To thoroughly test the AdvenChair, we need at least four prototypes with different combinations of components – wheelsets, tires and seats – including one for children,” Babb says. “And at a cost of $7,000 each, we still have a lot of fundraising to do before that.” AdvenChair is on its last few days of crowdfunding on IndieGoGo and has received some substantial private donations. The goal is to reach at least $50,000 December 19.
“As someone who has experienced the soul-restoring healing power of many adventures into the wilderness with my family and friends, I know the AdvenChair will do wonders for the physical and mental health of others like me,” says Babb. “It’s great to have the first step of our journey behind us. Now we need to keep the momentum rolling.”
About the AdvenChair:
The AdvenChair is an all-terrain wheelchair designed for people with mobility challenges who want to venture off the beaten path and experience the grandeur of the wilderness. It is the brainchild of Geoff Babb, a fire ecologist and avid outdoorsman from Bend, Oregon, who loved to ski, mountain bike and backpack with his wife and twin boys until a near-fatal brain stem stroke on November 10, 2005 forced him to use a wheelchair.
While the stroke forever changed his ability to move, Babb soon discovered that the biggest obstacle to experiencing a simple outing on local trails with his family again was not so much his body, but the frailties of common wheelchairs. Rather than lobbying for wheelchair-accessible wilderness trails, Babb chose to develop a wheelchair capable of adapting to the trails, and the AdvenChair was born.
On November 10, 2017, exactly 12 years to the day after his stroke, Babb survived a second brain stem stroke, which forced him to learn how to swallow and eat solid foods all over again. Yet it made him more determined than ever to share his all- terrain chair with other people with disabilities or limited mobility.
While developing the first AdvenChair, Babb also launched The Onward Project, LLC, to inspire, encourage and enable outdoor adventures for people of all abilities, and invites them to share their experiences and stories online.