Transcript
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In this episode, I sit down with Adam Combs, co-founder of Waypoint Adventure and director of Waypoint Adventure, north Carolina.
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Adam reveals the incredible mission behind Waypoint Adventure, a groundbreaking organization dedicated to making outdoor experiences accessible to individuals with disabilities.
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We talk about the cutting-edge world of adaptive adventure equipment and programs that make inclusivity in outdoor activities a reality, from specialized off-road wheelchairs to innovative kayaks.
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We'll explore the essential infrastructure and training required to utilize these tools effectively.
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Adam also shares the exciting expansion of Waypoint Adventure into Western North Carolina, a region brimming with opportunities for inclusive recreation, and we learned about the organization's collaborative efforts with local schools, social service agencies and North Carolina State Parks to design customized adventures that meet specific group needs and promote community building.
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Adam's passion shines as he talks about fostering a more inclusive community by normalizing the participation of individuals with disabilities in activities like rock climbing, hiking and mountain biking.
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Find out how you can support Waypoint Adventure's noble mission through participation, volunteering or donations.
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I'll see you on the other side.
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You're listening to Exploration Local, a podcast designed to explore and celebrate the people and places that make the Blue Ridge and Southern Appalachian Mountains special and unique.
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My name is Mike Andrus, the host of Exploration Local.
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Join us on our journey to explore these mountains and discover how they fuel the spirit of adventure.
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We encourage you to wander far, but explore local, let's go.
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Well, I'm excited to have Adam Combs in the studio with me today.
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He is the co-founder of Waypoint Adventure and he's the director of Waypoint Adventure North Carolina.
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Adam, thanks so much for dropping into the studio.
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I cannot wait to unpack this conversation today.
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Thanks for having me.
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I'm excited to be here.
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You know we were talking a little bit before we started recording earlier that our guests, the people who listen to this podcast, they know that we talk a lot about the benefits that can be derived from being in the outdoors, be it the physical benefits, the emotional benefits, the mental benefits, all of those kind of benefits people get.
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And I was reading in your information one of the founders and we'll kind of unpack this a little bit, but Dan Minnick, who was also the other co-founder of Waypoint Adventure he said this and I really thought this was pretty profound If people never experience genuine challenge and see themselves successfully overcoming it, they're less likely to challenge themselves and more likely to avoid challenging situations.
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The result is a missed opportunity to grow.
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And, adam, I know that I'm preaching to the choir with you, but if I could ever think of a population that really needed these types of opportunities to grow, it's the demographic that you serve, that you all serve at Waypoint Adventure, and I love to just kind of start there a little bit.
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What is Waypoint Adventure?
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What is it that you all do at Waypoint Adventure?
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And I love to just kind of start there a little bit.
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What is Waypoint Adventure?
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What is it that you all do.
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How did you get involved with it?
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And then there's so much more for us to unpack.
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Mike, I'll usually start this conversation with our mission statement.
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Waypoint's mission is to challenge people with disabilities to discover their purpose, talents and strengths through the transforming power of adventure.
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That's the mission statement and the two parts that I'll usually call out in that number one challenging people with disabilities.
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So Waypoint runs adventure programs for people with a wide range of disabilities physical, intellectual and developmental, social, emotional.
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Regardless of the level of someone's disability, we want to say yes.
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We want to barring some medical condition or a doctor saying this isn't safe, or, you know, parents saying this isn't safe, or the individual saying I'm not interested in taking that risk.
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We want to say yes to them, so wide you know.
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Serving folks with a wide range of disabilities is the first thing, and then the second thing is discovering purpose, talents and strengths.
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Mike, I mean I don't.
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We haven't talked too much about our personal story.
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I haven't heard your personal story, but for me it's been through adventure.
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It's been through, you know, pushing myself, testing my limits, challenging myself in the outdoors, rock climbing programs, multi-day backpacking trips, you know those kinds of things that that have taught me a lot about myself.
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Yeah.
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Starting from a very young age.
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You know, and I do genuinely believe that adventure, especially when done within a supportive community of people, teaches us about ourselves.
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So true.
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We often talk about.
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It's at the intersection of challenge and support is where learning really happens.
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So if we can provide the appropriate amount of whether it be physical support, intellectual and developmental support, a way of communicating where folks understand it well and a way of providing opportunities for people to communicate with us so that we understand them, whether it be identifying the exact right location for a particular individual or a group, you know, those are some of the examples of specific ways that we provide and kind of surround folks with a level of support and make them feel like, okay, maybe I can actually engage in this challenging activity.
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And we believe when that level of support is put in place, folks are more apt and more willing to challenge themselves and it's through that challenge that they walk away with that kind of either that aha moment that they've had themselves, or whether it's us spending some time asking the right questions at the end to say, what did you get out of this?
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Like, yes, it was fun, we all had a blast, but we believe there's something deeper that happened with you today, and so if you can help identify what that is, or if you can identify what that is, let's get at that a little bit.
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What is something that you experienced today that you can take back into your everyday life?
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You know things like confidence and self-esteem and a better understanding of what it means to work as part of a team.
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We believe those experiences and that learning happens on these adventures, and now people walk away from our programs being able to hopefully apply some of that back into their everyday life.
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Oh, that's amazing.
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I wonder if we can sort of talk a little bit about where you all actually got started.
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This came out of an.
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It was sort of an offshoot of something that you were doing up in the Northeast, and I'd love to kind of talk about that a little bit.
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How did all this get started?
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My undergraduate degree is in outdoor education from Montreat College right here in Black Mountain.
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Pretty soon after that I ended up at an organization in Tennessee, over in the Tri-Cities area in Bluff City, specifically called Riversway Outdoor Adventure Center.
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And Riversway Outdoor Adventure Center at that point in time ran adventure programs that were accessible to people with disabilities, and that was the first time I had the chance to work alongside this community of people.
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To work alongside this community of people, and probably the first time I I don't know, not the first time, but I don't know.
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It just was one of those jobs where it just kind of clicked.
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Oh, my goodness, there's a real.
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There's real impact happening here and we had formed a partnership with the Tri-Cities Public School System.
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When we were running, we called it Adventure Incentive and if students were meeting certain markers behavioral markers they were bringing their homework back to school, their truancy rates were going down, they were actually showing up to school, things of that nature were happening then they would earn these big adventure trips.
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Okay, and it worked.
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I mean, truancy rates were declining, students' grades were going up, they were showing better behavior in the classroom and out of the classroom.
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It was working, and for me that was this aha moment of oh my goodness, we can merge this experiential learning, experiential education model, with a public school system or this nonprofit with a public school system, bringing in a unique program and it bring about good results.
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And so I ended up going back to get my master's in special education from Appalachian State University and my hope was I want my own classroom.
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I want to be able to do, I want to build deep relationships with one classroom of students and be able to use some of these experiential learning models in the classroom.
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And that was 2006 to 2008.
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And so that was right when, if you're familiar with, the federal mandate of no Child Left Behind was being mandated on schools and I was watching as I was doing my research work.
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I was watching teachers covered up in paperwork trying to do all this reporting.
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It wasn't.
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It wasn't.
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That program wasn't necessarily rolled out super well and was difficult to implement.
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And I'm watching teachers covered up in paperwork and I'm like that's not what I want to do.
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That's not why I got into this.
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And so I kind of put the brakes on and did a scan of the country.
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Who else out there is using adventure programming, working with students in the special education population in hopes of bringing about good, you know, improved social and character skills.
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And I came across an organization called Outdoor Explorations, ended up getting a job up there, moved to Boston in 2008 and got started right away, you know, partnering with the Boston Public Schools running adventure programs for their special education departments.
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A little bit of time goes by 2009,.
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First quarter of 2009.
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We walked into the office one day and executive director sat us down and said well, we've lost funding and we're closing down.
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It really felt like kind of a gut punch because our team had really just started ramping up and we're making these great relationships and, you know, we're seeing a lot of fruit from the programming we were developing.
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Walked out of the office that day and the guy I was working most closely with was Dan Minnick.
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We were kind of boots on the ground designing and running programs and he looked at me.
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He's like dude, this can't end, got to keep doing it.
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We got to keep this going and that organization at that time had 20 years of history but they were wrestling the downturn in the economy in 2008 and various other things, Right.
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So we, very naively in our early to mid twenties, started a nonprofit.
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So Waypoint was founded in 2010.
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On the backs of outdoor explorations and the history that that organization had.
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We still I mean, if Dan was sitting here, he'd say this too we still very much feel like we're stumbling through this.
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You know we don't really know exactly what we're doing, but we're trying our best right, you're passionate.
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And we're surrounding ourselves, trying to surround ourselves with people that know and that we can ask questions of and can help work alongside us to help keep pushing this ball forward.
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But, mike, there's a need for this Again.
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Going back to my story, I have personally been impacted and, to this day, when I need to think clearly about something, what do I do?
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I go for a long hike or I get on my mountain bike and I just ride right Like it's therapeutic.
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It helps me decompress, it helps me understand, you know, and be able to unpack certain things that are going on in life.
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It helps me understand other people better.
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It builds deeper bonds, as we do, you know.
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Experience these adventures together.
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Everybody needs to experience that yeah.
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And so the sad part is there is a large population of people, and some would say the largest minority in the world, is often left out of experiences like this because of a lack of access, whether it be physical access, intellectual access, lack of invitation.
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I know a lot of people in this space right now are talking about the importance of inviting people, even though for many folks there isn't any sort of extreme adaptation that needs to happen.
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They just need someone to say hey, come on, I'm going to take you out, we're going to go and you're going to get a chance to experience something like you've never experienced before.
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You know Well it's amazing because you talk about I mean you just kind of hit on it when you talked about that there's a large population that can't, and those numbers, when I read them, were pretty powerful.
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I actually have the stats right here in front of me 16% in the world, one in six.
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In the US it's 27% one in four people have a disability and in North Carolina it's 29%.
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It's that high One in three, wow, and that's a broad spectrum right, if you think about the spectrum of people with disabilities physical, intellectual, social, emotional.
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There's a lot of more extreme, severe disabilities and some not so much, but people who have been identified as having a disability 29% one in three in the state of North Carolina.
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Wow, yeah, wow, just real quick, at a high level.
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What are the types of disabilities that you all are working with?
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Because it's not, and it's pretty, I mean, it's pretty wide breadth of disabilities.
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Yeah, very wide breadth.
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So you know, physical disabilities like spinal cord injuries, folks with varying levels of cerebral palsy, those types of things, any kind of condition that would cause someone to need some sort of mobility device, assistive device, strokes we had a man on a hike recently that just had a stroke and was able to walk a little bit.
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We took him on a hike out at Chimney Rock, actually in partnership with Chimney Rock State Park.
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Yeah, so folks with varying levels of physical disability, intellectual and developmental disabilities like Down syndrome, and folks with autism, sensory disabilities, folks who are deaf or blind.
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We've actually started a pretty cool partnership with a local organization called Bravo Blue Ridge Adventures.
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Vision Optional is the name of their organization.
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Really cool organization.
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Started out of a teacher in the blind and visually impaired department in the local public school system.
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We've been doing a bunch of hiking and kayaking programs with them.
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We have a tandem cycling program on the books with them this summer.
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We've been doing some team building programs.
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So, sensory disabilities and then have a history of working with folks with mental and emotional disabilities.
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We run regular programming with Boston University Center for Psychiatric Rehab.
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Great chance to get, you know, get folks together that are going through the process of kind of mental health therapy, giving them a chance to just go for a walk in the woods and experience what it feels like to be outside and be together with other people in a very kind of low pressure, low stress environment, taking some time to sit and listen to the birds and the trees and you know all the things that come along with that kind of slower pace, while at the same time learning some basic skills that would allow them to be able to do this without waypoint.
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You know, I don't know if this is gonna be one of your questions, but I'm gonna go on a little bit of a tangent here because that made me think of something.
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Dan often says this.
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Dan Minnick, who you quoted a second ago, often says Adam, our biggest job is to work ourselves out of a job.
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I love that Right.
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The goal, and that story about Boston University Center for Psychiatric Rehab made me think about that.
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The goal is that we as a community and I think we're moving in this direction, by the way would be more accessible to people with disabilities.
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Right, not only just wider doors and ramps, but we would just have an understanding of things like, you know, autism and how autism impacts people's behavior and how can I be a better friend and community member to folks with autism.
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You know, same with various other disabilities.
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But the hope is that our community in general, and definitely the outdoor adventure community, would just be more understanding and welcoming and open and team members of those you know agencies would just know how to work with them and would have the equipment in place to be able to say, yeah, we can accommodate your needs, right.
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So the hope is that eventually we get I mean, it's a big goal, right, yeah, but we get to a place where we Waypoint isn't needed.
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We've worked ourselves out of a job.
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That's the goal.
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I think it's a great goal.
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It seems to me like it's going to take a little bit of time to get there and people like you and what you do and what your organization does is critical in that in-between time.
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Like I don't even well, it's definitely critical, but it almost seems like it's, it's like the necessary step.
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People like yourself and people like Ryan and people like Dan they all need those organizations, need to exist so that you can have that invitation.
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But one of the things also and you've mentioned it and it's in a lot of y'all's collateral and I've been inside your store or your office so I've seen the equipment, it's the adaptive equipment that's there.
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So there are people, I guess, who have some sensory disabilities, but then the people who really have some mobile disabilities, you all have been able to identify equipment that can be used for them and you use it in the field.
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It's not light, it's not cheap and it's not.
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It requires somebody knowing what they're doing with this equipment and it's something that you all do really, really well.
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And I'm wondering if you can kind of unpack that a little bit too, because, like, I love every picture that I look at.
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It's smile, smile, smile and somebody really loving life.
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But you see somebody belaying here.
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It's at an indoor climbing center and they're in their chair and they're belaying.
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But there's things that you all are doing for people that you're just going to take them out on a hike and they're not mobile.
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Why don't you talk about that a little bit?
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We say access happens with infrastructure and invitation and the infrastructure is the equipment.
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You know, if an organization or an agency just purchases equipment and they have it there at the welcome center and they say, yeah, we've got it, this off-road wheelchair, unless someone's there to help people understand how the chair works, they understand the chair themselves, they understand how to help someone transfer from their personal chair into an off-road chair, they know the property or the facility well enough to know these are the places you can go easily independently and these are the places where you're going to need some assistance.
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And then, in those places where they need assistance, they know what that assistance looks like, right?
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So yes, there is a lot of infrastructure and training and understanding and knowledge needed to be able to make sure folks are supported appropriately.
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Thankfully, the adventure equipment world there's a lot of really cool innovation going on out there in terms of, you know, fully accessible kayaks.
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There's a company out of the Midwest called Creating Ability.
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Kevin Carr wonderful guy has created some really cool adaptive kayaking equipment that seat backs in the chairs that mimic someone's wheelchair seat, different styles of hand adaptation that help folks be able to grip and use a paddle to go kayaking All kinds of cool innovative kayaking equipment out there, a huge variety of off-road wheelchairs, both self-propelled chairs as well as passenger chairs.
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And yeah, you're right, it's not cheap.
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We do a lot of fundraising to help be able to purchase some of this equipment and make this equipment available through our programs and, you know, to folks who may want to come rent it or borrow it or that kind of thing.
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But there's a lot of really cool innovative equipment out there and it's continuing to.
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You know, innovate People are continuing to innovate.
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I mean, even Kevin with Creating Ability often says be using this equipment and let me know what's not working.
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You know, let me know if you have a new idea that we haven't thought about.
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People that are on the forefront of this equipment design are constantly trying to try new things and innovate new things and it's happening quickly so that folks, regardless of their ability level, are able to come.
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Oh, that's great.
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Yeah, and participate to the extent that they can.
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This program has only been in existence in Western North Carolina just for the last couple of years, right.
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So I love to kind of put a pin in that equipment piece, because I do want to come back to that, because I think that there's ways that people can get involved, and this may be one of the ways that people can get involved.
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This program Boston, it comes to North Carolina.
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You're the right person, ryan Carlson, also your deputy director, he was sort of the right person at the right time.
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Let's kind of go back in time, just really just the recent past, the last couple of years, and talk about you taking that from Boston then here into Western North Carolina where we have an immense and endless number of opportunities to recreate.
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Yeah, yeah.
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So Waypoint was founded in Boston in 2010.
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And again, for some reason, 2014 is the date in my mind when Dan and I started talking about and, I think, realizing oh my goodness, there is something here and we've been able to build enough of an infrastructure and kind of a template for how this is done that I think we could pick this thing up and put it in other places around the country, based on the speed that it grew in New England and in Boston, realized there's a need for this, you know, in other places in the country.
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And so, yeah, and just about every year, at some point in the year, from 2014 on, this conversation would come up.
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You know, could we do it somewhere else?
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What would it look like?
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Who do we know?
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Where would we do it?
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And, having been from this area of the southeast, I grew up in Bristol, just over the mountain.
00:21:45.623 --> 00:21:50.761
You know, like I said before, every single time this conversation came up, I was like I know where we need to do it.
00:21:50.761 --> 00:21:53.313
Western North Carolina is the spot.
00:21:54.194 --> 00:21:58.844
And in 2022, the Boston Globe wrote an article about Waypoint.
00:21:58.844 --> 00:22:01.415
There was a lot of response to that article.
00:22:01.415 --> 00:22:09.047
A lot of people reached out curious about Waypoint, wanting to support Waypoint, and Dan and I reconnected over that article.
00:22:09.047 --> 00:22:13.961
He actually came down, we went, we did a big backpacking trip and just had lots of conversations about gosh.
00:22:13.961 --> 00:22:17.633
You know, we always dreamed about geographical expansion, talked a lot about it.
00:22:17.633 --> 00:22:22.960
You know, during that trip Dan went back to Boston, called me up a couple of days later and was like man.
00:22:22.960 --> 00:22:28.549
He said we have been able to put a bit of a nest egg aside as an organization.
00:22:28.549 --> 00:22:33.230
We have some funding set aside that we need to do something with.
00:22:33.230 --> 00:22:40.153
And he said I want us to think about and really kind of push on this dream that we always had of geographical expansion.
00:22:40.153 --> 00:22:45.175
Would you be interested in coming back on board and helping launch Waypoint North Carolina?
00:22:45.175 --> 00:22:48.243
And the answer was very quickly yes.
00:22:49.106 --> 00:22:54.593
Almost exactly one year ago we started the process of launching Waypoint North Carolina.
00:22:54.712 --> 00:23:01.297
I told Dan well, if we're going to do this, I need a partner, I need someone to work in this with me.
00:23:01.718 --> 00:23:04.626
And immediately thought of a good buddy of mine, ryan Carlson.
00:23:05.090 --> 00:23:39.163
And Ryan comes with 25 plus years of experience designing and leading and running adventure programs, big expedition programs around the world, and just has a deep understanding of what it means to not only put together a safe and effective adventure program, but effective in the sense that has a deep understanding of how do we use adventure as a way to bring about that aha moment, that learning and that that kind of personal growth, and how do we custom design and bring those two things together.
00:23:39.163 --> 00:23:50.057
Ryan has that deep understanding and so pretty quickly pulled him in and fortunately he was in a moment of transition and so the timing was right for him and so super glad to have him.
00:23:50.057 --> 00:23:55.103
And then we just recently hired our first full-time program coordinator, shelby Hampton.
00:23:55.103 --> 00:24:12.076
Shelby comes with lots of experience, both in the public school system and in the healthcare setting, as a CTRS, a certified therapeutic recreation specialist, so slowly starting to build what I believe is a super skilled and effective team for seeing this mission continue to grow here in Western North Carolina.
00:24:12.397 --> 00:24:31.162
Let's talk a little bit about some of the programs that you have held, some of the types of activities and, even if you haven't held an activity within this particular and I know you do hiking and biking and you do kayaking and climbing but some of the others that you do I love to hear about some of the first experiences, and you talked about Bravo, which is amazing, and Bravo has been on the show.
00:24:31.162 --> 00:24:33.606
I loved, absolutely love, having them here too.
00:24:33.606 --> 00:24:38.180
So, yeah, I just love to hear a little bit about what the last year has been like and some of the programs that you've done.
00:24:38.550 --> 00:24:45.483
So Waypoint runs programs in two formats open enrollment programs and custom group programs.
00:24:45.769 --> 00:24:45.849
Okay.
00:24:46.451 --> 00:24:56.897
So open enrollment programs are dates that we put on the calendar and then we do our own advertising or maybe in partnership with other collaborators, we'll advertise these programs.
00:24:56.897 --> 00:24:58.855
Folks can go right on our website.
00:24:58.855 --> 00:25:11.403
They can click on a date and a program type that they want to sign up for and they sign up and so you end up getting on those open enrollment programs, this kind of mixed bag and mixed group of people with and without disabilities going out on an adventure together.
00:25:11.403 --> 00:25:12.845
Okay, super fun.
00:25:12.845 --> 00:25:31.895
Custom group programs are partnerships with already intact groups, so school, special education, classrooms or departments, social service agencies that are serving folks with disabilities, and those types of things where we actually go in and identify their goals.
00:25:32.115 --> 00:25:33.451
What do they want to get out of this?
00:25:33.451 --> 00:25:35.756
Right, it's the whole begin with the end in mind.
00:25:35.756 --> 00:25:37.259
Why adventure?
00:25:37.259 --> 00:25:43.461
Why kayaking, rock climbing, hiking, why do you feel like you want to bring your group on these experiences?
00:25:43.461 --> 00:25:44.613
What do you want to get out of this?
00:25:44.613 --> 00:25:50.374
And then we will go back and we will design a program specifically for that group.
00:25:50.374 --> 00:26:08.518
Both you know designing in, you know what type of equipment might be needed, where we might host the program, what adventure type is going to be most effective for bringing out those goals and then we kind of put all of that together in a very intentional way to hopefully bring about that goal.
00:26:08.518 --> 00:26:15.185
One example, and maybe to keep answering your question a little bit we just recently partnered with IC Imagine Charter School.
00:26:15.508 --> 00:26:16.089
Oh, very cool.
00:26:16.250 --> 00:26:22.798
They have occupational track, special education class in the high school and we had connected with them.
00:26:22.798 --> 00:26:26.605
They reached out, we had a phone call and they said we want to go on an indoor kayaking program, which is one of the program types that we offer.
00:26:26.605 --> 00:26:30.369
Okay, we want to go on an indoor kayaking program, which is one of the program types that we offer.
00:26:30.369 --> 00:26:31.813
Okay.
00:26:31.813 --> 00:26:34.638
And we're like, okay, great, you know, let's talk a little bit more.
00:26:34.638 --> 00:26:35.882
Tell us more about your students.
00:26:35.882 --> 00:26:38.512
What are you hoping to get out of this?
00:26:38.512 --> 00:26:41.560
Like you know, some groups, some custom groups, will say we just want to go have fun.
00:26:41.560 --> 00:26:43.215
That's really the big goal for us.
00:26:43.215 --> 00:27:02.436
Some groups say we want our students or clients, or whoever it is, to understand what it means to work together better or to be kind to one another, or what it means to persevere through hard tasks and come out on the other side Whether we complete we're able to complete that task or not.
00:27:02.436 --> 00:27:03.200
What does that feel like?
00:27:03.200 --> 00:27:03.441
Right?
00:27:03.441 --> 00:27:07.059
So we ask all these questions and say what are you really trying to get out of this?
00:27:07.059 --> 00:27:11.695
And the teacher we were talking to she's like we want to do an indoor kayaking program.
