Adults with disabilities experience winter adventure at Camp Menogyn

Each year for the past 18 years, adults with disabilities – along with their caregivers – visit YMCA Camp Menogyn to experience all that winter has to offer.

WTIP spoke with staff from Living Well Disability Services and Wilderness Inquiry to learn how winter activities can be made accessible to everyone.

“We like to make sure that people feel included in opportunities to be out in community around access to dog sledding, all of the different activities people get to do outside,” said Heather Heier, Communications and Events Manager for Living Well. “It’s really meant to be what makes people happy, and give them the same access and accessibility to a beautiful trip like this just as everybody else gets to do.”

Wilderness Inquiry helps make winter hikes accessible to people in wheelchairs by providing pulk sleds, which staff pull from the front and push from the back. Pulk sled teams enable people to visit islands on frozen West Bearskin Lake and even venture up the Caribou Rock Trail near the BWCA Wilderness.

“We’re just excited to be able to tell the world that people with disabilities and their families deserve to be included in this rich beautiful life,” said Heier. “And get to do all the fun stuff that we all kind of take for granted.”

Chuck Olsen March 27, 2025