“Boldly going where no chair has gone before” is the mantra for AdvenChair, the all-terrain wheelchair designed to allow everyone to visit wild places not necessarily on graded trails. Geoff Babb, the local inventor of the AdvenChair, and his team use Smith Rock State Park as a proving ground for that premise, each time pushing the envelope to make the chair more resilient to hiking trail challenges. This time the goal was the Burma Road summit, with a total elevation gain of 1156 feet. They did the roughly 6-mile round trip in just over 3 hours, over gravelly steep hillsides, around boulders, and at times, very narrow trails.
Read More