Parallel Lines: Wufky Crosby

Author’s Note: “Parallel Lines” is a series on winter para athletes and the adaptive gear that they use, modify and wish existed on the market in order to achieve their goals.

Throughout this series, I’ll be using the phrases ‘para athlete’ and ‘adaptive athlete’ relatively interchangeably, though there IS a difference between the two.

It’s a bit of a square-rectangle situation: while all adaptive athletes are para athletes, not all para athletes are adaptive athletes. For example, someone with cerebral palsy may use the same gear as an able-bodied skier, even as their neurological disorder might prevent them from riding all day or from skinning up in high-exertion terrain on a warm spring day due to their body’s heat intolerance.

In this series, because I chat exclusively with adaptive athletes, I am able to use both phrases equally, without conflict, and my choice usually reflects how the athletes refer to themselves.

I have discovered as I write, however, that I might personally prefer “para.” As a prefix, para means ‘beside - alongside of - beyond - aside from - closely related to” which is exactly how each of the skiers and riders featured in this series exist: beside, along with, and often beyond their able-bodied counterparts.

Athlete: Wufky Crosby (he/him)

Primary 23/24 Terrain: Boreal Mountain and Palisades Tahoe

Sport: Freestyle and big-mountain sit-skiing

Wufky Crosby started his sit-skiing career in December of 2019, just four months after an accident left him with no feeling or control below his T10 vertebra.

He was riding a 30 year-old monoski he’d found on eBay and took his first turns by mimicking the motions of paralympians he’d watched on YouTube. “The general consensus at that point was ‘You just got hurt. Wait till next year.’ But I didn’t want to take no for an answer. So I basically taught myself.”

Not taking no for an answer has remained a theme in Wufky’s life since. Even though he now rides a much newer and improved Hydra monoski from DynAccess (acquired with the help of a High Fives Foundation grant three years ago), he’s far from done questioning the status quo.

“Lately, I’ve been working with my bindings.” Unlike a stand-up skier who’s got knees uphill of their bindings to worry about, for a sit-skier, the goal is to never release from your ski. Which meant Wufky found himself locking down his stock bindings so tight that his ski had no ability to deflect or move. “I would either go through ten bindings or blow up forty skis a season.”

Moment Skis, his sponsor since 2020, tried making a beefier ski for him to address the issue, but Wufky, a bit of a maniac on snow, still found himself ripping bindings right out, even if his skis held up a bit better thanks to Moment’s efforts.

A mechanical engineer by training, Wufky knew there had to be a solution. He’d reached out to DynAccess before about an idea he had for reinforcing the bucket on his rig after he cracked it during a park session. DynAccess responded by not only building his proposed plate, but by also asking Wufky if he’d like to join their rider team and help with product testing.

So Wufky, with their help, runs a brand new binding much more capable of handling the type of big-hit and high-speed riding he does most. A shackle in the rear allows the ski to deflect and move as he moves; a wider footprint disperses the combined weight of Wufky and his bucket and shock on his ski, allowing the ski to last longer.

The new binding has also allowed Wufky to trust his gear more, which in turn allows him to progress further. “I feel like it’s great strides for the future of not just myself riding, but for all the other athletes who want to go bigger.”

With the binding sorted, Wufky has turned focus to his shock, a Penske Racing, four-way adjustable shock originally meant for motorsport vehicles. With the help of a camera mounted on his sit-ski’s footplate, Wufky can watch video of the shock as he rides down the hill to adjust rebound and dampening.

“It’s gotta be precise,” he asserts, in what might be the most mechanical-engineer-y of all mechanical engineer quotes. “I’m so aggressive on it that I actually have two of the same shocks at the same spring rates and everything, because when I get one back from servicing,” (he’s on a strict ninety-day rotation), “it’s almost time to send the other one out.”

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Wufky is also chatting with Öhlins, another motorsport shock manufacturer, about getting an even larger shock “so I can go off of bigger stuff” than the 30 foot cliffs and 60 foot gaps he’s already hitting “and soak it in a little better.”

A tally on Wufky’s garage wall attests to his aggressiveness: he’s logged over four hundred and fifty days on snow there since that first day back in 2019. “For me, skiing is a massive escape from my wheelchair. I can go out and do all this shit that my friends can do, all this stuff that my friends barely dare chase me on.”

“Stuff” like competing in the Freeride World Tour Qualifier this season, after two years of fighting to get a license. “There’s no adaptive class, so I just entered the Men’s Skier category. At first they were like ‘Oh we can’t have you compete cuz we don’t want you to get hurt worse.’ And I was like okay here’s me jumping off cliffs in Alaska, here’s me straight lining chutes.”

It’s not the first time Wufky’s run into this sort of event organizer hesitation or pushback. “I just did a rail jam and there was no adaptive class, which would’ve been easy to throw in. Everyone's like ‘Well you don’t see sit-skiers competing,’ and my response is ‘Yeah because you don’t give us a chance to.’

With his entrance into the FWT Qualifier secured, Wufky hopes he can prove that adaptive categories belong at all levels of competition and in a variety of disciplines beyond just racing.

He’s also hoping it will help bring even more adaptive-specific gear onto the market.

“For example, you’re required by the IFSA to have an avalanche bag to compete in certain stops,” Wufky explains. But no sit-skier pack exists yet. “Right now I've got an Arva 20 liter pack and it works great and it buckles on me well but I feel like if I was in an avalanche, the equipment I have on me would probably be a weight drag and I don’t feel like the bag would be as effective as it could be.”

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So he’s exploring whether there’s a way to make a double bag pack that might inflate from both his back and his knees, to give him the extra lift he - and any other sit-skier - would need in a serious, real-life avalanche scenario.

Usable backcountry gear isn’t just a theoretical question for the future for Wufky, either; he already logs serious hours moving uphill to gain access to the types of features and terrain he enjoys riding most.

“Because of my new binding system, I’m able to mount my ski - a Moment Commander 124 - backwards with a skin on it and I’ll push up the same way as you’d wheelchair.” With the help of a few solid touring partners harnessed to him, pulling and breaking trail ahead, and a couple children’s snowshoes attached to his outriggers, Wufky says he’s able to get in at least a lap or two each day he goes out.

“It’s hard work for those few turns; all day spent climbing to the peak. But when you get that sunset beer back at your car thinking ‘Wow, what a day,’ it makes it all worth it. That feeling, you can’t beat it.”

Wufky’s longer-term goals are just as wild as his general style, demeanor and flair: “I would really love to go out heli skiing. I also think it’d be the coolest thing ever to be the first sit-skier to aerial from a helicopter. I know that’s gonna have to be a ‘perfect conditions, perfect day’ kinda thing. So that’ll be a few years down the line.”

Then Wufky grins, recounting the drops he’s already practicing off a ledge into a foam pit at Boreal, and you can see a mischievous gleam in his eye. “Probably.”

To learn more about Wufky Crosby and to follow his journey in becoming the first sit-skier to compete in the Freeride World Tour Qualifier, follow him on Instagram at @sittin_sendies_official