outdoors

Life on one leg includes time on slopes, thanks to Mt. Baker trainers

LESSON: Reena Rughani speeds across the snow as volunteer ski instructor Larry Parcher follows at Mt. Baker Ski Area. PETE KENDALL HERALD PHOTOS

PRACTICE RUN: Larry Parcher, a volunteer ski instructor at Mt. Baker Ski Area, talks Reena Rughani through a lesson. PETE KENDALL HERALD PHOTOS

SWEET SUCCESS: Trudy Parcher, coordinator of the adaptive ski program at Mt. Baker Ski Area, tells student Reena Rughani how proud she is of her progress.

SKIING ASSISTANCE: Rick Cavnar (left), a volunteer ski instructor, holds the bi-ski steady as Larry Parcher unstraps student Reena Rughani at the end of a lesson.

Fiona Cohen, The Bellingham Herald

It was a quiet day on the beginner runs at Mt. Baker Ski Area. Most families were busy with a ski race elsewhere on the mountain, and snow fell steadily, smoothing out the rough parts of the landscape and muffling sound.

Reena Rughani cruised down the beginning of the Seven Hills run on a bi-ski, a device allowing a rider to sit in a chair suspended above two skis. She moved smoothly along, assured that her instructor, Larry Parcher, held her secure with the bi-ski's handrail.

But Parcher wasn't holding on. He'd let go, keeping contact with a couple of bright-blue tethers.

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Mt. Baker Ski Area's adaptive ski program offers lessons for people with all kinds of disabilities. Single two-hour lessons are $50, which pays for a two-hour lesson with a professional instructor, support from volunteers, any necessary equipment and a lift ticket.

She was skiing on her own.

This was the second time in 12 years the 33-year-old had learned to ski. But this time meant more.

On February 22, 1997 - six years, a week and a day earlier than this lesson - doctors had amputated Rughani's left leg at the hip to save her life from flesh-eating bacteria.

"I didn't even think I would be able to walk," she said.

She's still adapting to life on one leg. A financial worker with the Department of Health and Social Services, the Bellingham resident adjusts her schedule to work long hours Monday to Thursday, and then spends Friday afternoon traveling to Vancouver, B.C., for physical therapy to help her function with a prosthesis.

She decided to learn to ski again when a work friend, Judy Gischer, said she was volunteering with the Adaptive Ski program and encouraged her to try it. Rughani had a couple of lessons standing on her one leg before that season ended. When a new season started, she decided to try it sitting down on a device called a bi-ski. She liked it, and kept working on it.

The bi-ski is a fiberglass chair mounted above two skis with outriggers that attach to the arms to control speed and help steer and balance. Once Rughani is strapped in - with nylon belts on her ankle, calf, thigh, hips, waist, and two over her shoulders - she can control her direction just by looking toward where she wants to go, and modulate her speed using outriggers, which have skis at one end and spikes on the other to help her stop.

Rughani had to learn how to fall - but in a way that avoids injuring herself with the metal things attached to her body. After three lessons at Baker, she had it down, she said, at least on her right side. She was more hesitant about falling on her left.

Riding the chairlift required other skills. Rughani had to raise the bi-ski's seat using a built-in jack. The lift operators slowed the chairlift, and she positioned herself by it. Parcher and Rick Cavnar, a volunteer, lifted her on to the chair, and she used hooks on her outriggers to hold on to the top bar while they attached a safety strap to the back of the chair.

Getting on the chair hits a release on the jack, so when her companions lift her off at the top of the run, she's able to ski immediately.

Eventually, she'll be able to do the whole thing by herself.

Rughani went down the slope with Parcher either holding on to the rail behind her head or following behind holding the end of two blue tethers.

Two volunteers skied nearby, ready to block skiers or snowboarders who might collide with her.

She'd progressed a lot. On the first lesson, Parcher held her the whole way. Rughani felt a little overwhelmed by the complicated apparatus.

"I felt there was too many things to do and I would forget," she said.

She had a few bad habits. Parcher and the volunteers joked about "Reena's need for speed," a tendency to go faster down hills than she could control. It was one source of a series of crashes on her third lesson.

But on her fourth lesson, she mellowed. "You didn't scare me once that time," Parcher told her as they prepared to do another run. For the first time, he had held the tethers fully extended, and she was skiing well.

"Those were the prettiest turns," said Parcher's wife, Trudy, another Mt. Baker ski instructor, who helped out during the lesson. "She linked her turns really well. They were rounded. She had good speed control. She used the uphill to her advantage. She's learning to make the mountain work for her."

Making sure Rughani wasn't watching, Trudy Parcher turned her head and wiped away tears.

Teaching skiing to disabled people is an emotional experience, Trudy Parcher said. Kids and adults come to the mountain with anything from spinal injuries to blindness to mental disabilities. They place a lot of trust in the instructor and the volunteers, and when they start, it can be overwhelming.

Larry Parcher agreed.

"When you see the smile that lights up their face, it's a warm fuzzy feeling. It's a reward," he said.

Rughani looks forward to skiing more, maybe purchasing her own bi-ski and going on a ski trip with Gischer and some other friends.

Her plans don't end there. When she's mastered the bi-ski she wants to try skiing standing on one leg, holding outriggers from her arms. And when she's done with that, she wants to ski cross-country.

At the end of her lesson her foot was freezing, but she had a relaxed warm grin.

She said she felt accomplished, particularly considering she'd just passed the anniversary of losing her leg.

"I feel like I've done something that I didn't think I was going to be able to do years ago."

Reach Fiona Cohen at fcohen@bellinghamherald.com or 715-2276.