Parallel Lines: Hailey Griffin

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Check out the rest of the Parallel Lines series here.

Athlete: Hailey Griffin

Primary 23/24 terrain: Park City

Sport: Sit-skiing

Paralympic-hopeful Hailey Griffin is matter-of-fact when it comes to the at-fault car accident that left her with an L1 spinal cord injury: “I was an alcoholic. Functioning, but an alcoholic nonetheless.”

As she made her way through her recovery, learning to live paralyzed from the knees down, Hailey says her already challenging then-partner became abusive. “I think he was just angry because he didn’t want to have to take care of someone in a wheelchair.”

The emotional turmoil Hailey experienced throughout the life-altering experience was what led her back onto snow. “I just decided one day that I wasn’t going to do it anymore,” she says of putting up with mistreatment and of letting others tell her that she wasn’t capable of doing the things she set her sights on.

“That’s when I found skiing: it was because I was in this space where I was like ‘I’m gonna go live my life.’”

Not that the path forward from that moment was simple, emotionally or physically. “Learning how to monoski is really hard,” Hailey laughs. “I always say you really have to want it. But, I dunno, I was just ready to go all-in on whatever I was doing. So finding resources and figuring it out was easy for me because I had no hesitation. I was like ‘I’m doing this!’”

Her first day sit-skiing was in Crested Butte with the Adaptive Sports Center. “They had me in a Dynamique from Enabling Technologies. It’s lower to the ground so it’s a little bit easier to use, and then they had me on tethers as well. I think that first day I took one run with tethers on and then they took them off.”

“I grew up skiing,” she says, referencing her earlier years spent on the slopes at Telluride, “So I think I could just feel it, you know?”

Hailey says she went out as much as possible that first sit-ski season four years ago, thanks to help from the High Fives Foundation. “They gave me a grant,” she explains with gratitude. “ I was going to use it to buy my own rig but they said, ‘You know you should really try out some rigs first before you buy one,’ and I was like ‘Oh yeah that makes sense.’” She laughs. “So instead, I used that money to buy lessons and rent skis.”

After trying several rigs, Hailey says she thought she had landed on the Dynacess Hydra. “But I was way too light for what the original model is set up for, so I was learning on this big, bulky thing.”

Hailey says she didn’t realize just how unwieldy the ski was for her, however, until the Dynaccess team came out to Crested Butte. “They let me try out their Hydra Light which is made for people who weigh less,” she says. “I got on that ski and I was like ‘THIS is it! This is the one I want!”

Hailey spent the rest of that first season on a rented Hydra Light. And while a move back home to Telluride might have felt initially dispiriting (Hailey says she couldn’t find housing, an unfortunately increasingly common experience for ski town residents across the mountain west), it came with a silver lining: the Go Hawkeye Foundation.

“The founder is this seventy-something year-old guy who does things like thousand mile hikes to raise money for adaptive athletes,” Hailey says with a wide grin. “He’s a legend in Telluride.”

Hailey says that while the Go Hawkeye Foundation graciously gave her a grant, due to their relatively small organizational size, it wasn’t enough to cover the full cost of a Hydra Light, a total that would end up running her upwards of $8600. So they also, successfully, hosted a fundraiser for her to try to raise the remainder.

“I wouldn’t be where I am today without help,” Hailey says, in a tone that says it feels impossible to emphasize the point enough. “I’ve had a lot of support.”

Support, mixed with her own brand of independence. The Hydra Light, which she still rides, is aluminum “so it’s super easy to move around. I just carry it on my lap to get it places,” Hailey explains. And those places? Beyond the steeps and moguls of Colorado, where Hailey can now be seen bopping about with confidence four years into her sit-ski career, the list also now includes the slopes of Park City, where she’s training as an alpine racer with the help of the National Ability Center (NAC).

“I’m training to hopefully one day make the National Team. I wanna go to the paralympics,” she says, adding that she’s never been to Italy, where the 2026 winter games will be held.

Hailey says she chose the NAC over the National Sport Center for the Disabled (NSCD) in Winter Park partly because she had friends there and partly because it was an easier commute to Montrose, where her son lives, than over Berthoud Pass.

Hailey says getting far enough as a sit skier that she’s even considering the Paralympics has been a process of trial, error, laughter and humility. “I think the hardest thing about sit-skiing is just being strapped to that thing and having to lean down some steep shit,” she chuckles. “Nothing about it is really that intuitive. It’s just scary. But I think that’s what I love the most about it: I have to constantly be facing my fears. Because there’s no other way down, you know?”

Hailey also says she’s still searching for a few key components to her athletic pursuits. Take her sit ski’s bucket, for example. “I think there’s like one major company that makes buckets that you can get molded to your ass, but those cost a million dollars. I didn’t go that route.”

Instead, Hailey says she sits on a Purple brand seat cushion and, like many other sit skiers whose level of injury allows them to use some degree of core strength and micro-adjustments to stay properly positioned in their buckets, has attempted to pad the rest out herself.

“I have a couple friends who are or have worked for the Hanger Clinic,” Hailey adds, referring to a major US prosthetics provider. “And I think they’re trying to make personalized buckets for your butt that don’t cost a whole lot of money, which is gonna be a game changer.”

Hailey says her excitement to see such an option come onto the market is not just about finances: “Padding your butt takes away from some of the control that you have,” she explains, especially if it's squishy, like her seat cushion, which equates to the same sort of play non-adaptive skiers attempt to avoid by wearing thin socks or sizing down in boot sole length.

And control, for Hailey as for all skiers, is imperative. To that end, she has tweaked her shock’s preload, rebound and dampening to suit her riding style, and has fine-tuned what skis she uses, especially for racing. And while she enjoys the skis she’s on, Hailey does wonder what it might look like if companies made (more) specific skis for sit skiers.

“I have this partnership through High Fives with RMU because there have been a couple skis made just for monos but I don’t know that they really make them any more, so I think RMU is trying to come up with a new one,” Hailey muses.

When asked what a ski made specifically for a sit skier might look like, Hailey shakes her head. “That’s what we don’t know yet. They’ve got a couple of us on the project, riding their skis trying to figure out what we like and what works well.”

For now, Hailey is content to carry on using standard mass-market skis, crediting her coaches, friends, ski partners and mentors with being perhaps the most important piece of the gear equation for teaching her how to put it all together and for offering companionship and the power of shared experience.

“I just think the adaptive community is so special. Because, you know, so many of us have been through some hard shit and I think it just kinda tweaks your perspective a little and that’s pretty cool.”

To watch Hailey chase her dreams (and to see if a chance encounter last winter at Snowbird might translate into her first ever heli sit ski adventure!) you can follow Hailey on Instagram at @gruffmagriff