I don’t hate snow. I just hate what a pain in the ass it is. Pushing through it is either hard or impossible. And if you can push through, snow coats your wheels, pushrims, casters and any surface it touches, and then despite your best efforts to knock and towel it off, it inevitably follows you inside, leaving a trail of puddles as it melts.

I know I’m not alone. When I polled other wheelchair-using staff at New Mobility about what they did when snowy weather came, the answer was three for three: “Stay inside.” But the more I think about it, “pain in the ass” isn’t the whole story. Lots of things are a pain in ass as a wheelchair user — and I don’t hate all of them. Getting my handcycle into my truck bed is a giant pain, but I do it because it means I’m going for a ride. The thing about snow is that for most wheelchair users, the pain in the ass just isn’t worth it.

Power Plows

Power chair users, you too can join the snowplowing fun. Back in 2011, we reported on a guy, Charlie McCoy, who made a V-shaped plow from an old motorcycle seat, a handle from a sweeper and some extra aluminum siding, which he attached to his Jazzy chair via bungee cords. McCoy claimed he could plow drifts up to 16 inches high. Over the years, other power chair users have devised similar systems — one with square tubing and what looks like an ATV plow blade. And Nordicplow.com sells a plow that you can attach to an Action Trackchair.

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Now that I live in a place where snow falls and then sticks around for weeks, sometimes months, I’ve had to reassess my relationship with the stuff. I could handle staying inside for a day, maybe two. After that, cabin fever is real. So, to take some weight off my wife’s snow shoveling shoulders and to give myself something productive to do, I started to think about ways that I could help plow our driveway and parking area.

My dad, who lives on the adjoining property, has an ATV and he just happened to have a snowplow attachment for it. These kits have a plow blade attached to an arm that you bolt onto the front end of your ATV. A similar model is the Kolpin ATV Switchblade Snow Plow System, available for $400 from Tractor Supply Co. Once the plow is attached, you raise and lower it via the push-button winch control. The ATV has an automatic transmission, so shifting isn’t an issue, and you operate the gas with a thumb throttle. The hardest part about adapting an ATV is getting on it. For me, this meant figuring out one of the more awkward transfers I’ve dealt with in my 20+ years as a quad. It goes something like this:

Wedge my chair at 45 degrees to the mid-point on the ATV. Put my right foot on the ATV’s foot platform, bend forward and lever my butt up onto the ATV frame. At this point I’m kind of stuck. My butt is resting on the rear wheel guard, and I don’t have leverage to push myself upright. So, I slide down a little, which blocks my right knee against the front wheel guard and gives me just enough stability to move my hands up and lift my butt onto the seat. Deep breath. Left leg up then shimmy farther onto the seat. Then rock backward while lifting my right leg up, which gives me just enough room to clear the handlebars with my leg.

See, pain in the ass. But I’m happy to do it because now I’m sitting on an ATV and ready to go plow some snow! I lower the plow down, hit the gas and I’m off. Hitting the brake lever is an adventure with my quad hands but if I feather off the throttle about 10 feet before the edge of our parking pad, I can push the snow off the pavement and get myself stopped before snow, me and the ATV go tumbling down the hill.

The only physical adaptation my dad had to make to the ATV was to the reverse foot pedal. We used a flat piece of aluminum as a lever and bolted it to the ATV frame. A tie rod attaches to the one end of the lever and runs down to the foot pedal. When you push the lever up, it depresses the pedal and lets you shift into reverse. After my first pass, I raise the plow, push the lever up, shift into reverse, back up and make another pass. Despite not having functional trunk muscles or a backrest, my hands on the bars gives me enough upper body stability to control the machine. I have to round my back forward so my posture looks like the old man from Up, but it’s more stable than you’d imagine. Once I have snow built up, the limited braking becomes less sketchy because the piles serve as guard rails.

It takes an hour or so to clear our 400-foot driveway and parking pad. By the time I’m done, I’m red-faced and sore and a lot less grumpy than I had been sitting inside. The plowing isn’t perfect — my wife still has to clean up with the shovel and someone has to plow every few inches of snowfall or the ATV isn’t heavy enough to push it — but since my previous contributions to snow removal were nonexistent, I’ll take it.

I transfer back down into my wheelchair and roll inside. My wheels are covered in snow, casters too. I wipe them down, wait for the leftovers to melt and towel up the puddles. It’s still a pain in the ass. But today it’s worth dealing with.