The trail that closed
Before his injury, Daylan rode the Pisgah ridgelines every other weekend — first on a mountain bike, later on a battered dual-sport. The spinal cord injury six years ago did not take the mountains out of his head; it just put a locked gate between him and every trailhead he loved.
He tried the options most riders in his situation know well: paved greenways, scenic overlooks from the car window, watching his friends’ helmet-cam footage on a phone screen. The footage was the worst part. He knew every switchback by heart and could not reach a single one.
A machine, not a compromise
What changed his mind at the demo day was not the spec sheet — it was the sound. Or the lack of it. The Rock Climber walked up a 30-degree rock step in near silence, the wheel-leg chassis switching modes mid-climb in half a second, no drama, no winch, no one pushing from behind.
Most adaptive equipment, Daylan says, feels like it is apologizing for existing. This did not. Four independent motors, long-travel suspension, and a chassis that reads terrain faster than he could — it felt less like a mobility device and more like the machines he used to build in his garage.
The only thing that would be better than this would be walking.
Daylan
SCI rider · Rock Climber 4WD
The ridge
The route he picked for his first real ride was not gentle: 12.4 km with 410 meters of climbing, finishing on an exposed granite spine he last stood on in 2019. His brother rode ahead on a dirt bike, expecting to wait. He mostly did not have to.
On the final pitch — 38 degrees of loose slab — the machine dropped into rock mode, torque vectoring across the four corners, and walked up without a single stall. At the top, Daylan did not say anything for a while. His brother stopped filming. The footage from that morning is twelve minutes long, and eleven of them are just wind.
What weekends look like now
These days the group chat works in reverse: his friends propose routes, and Daylan is the one asking whether there is anything technical worth the drive. The machine lives on a small trailer behind his truck, charged and muddy.
Asked what he would tell someone six years into the same waiting, he keeps it short: stop watching the footage. Go find out what the machine can do — and what you can still do with it.
