ELY — David Hicks thought he was making a nice gesture. Sitting around at a Minnesota Wild sled hockey camp three years ago, he suggested taking some of the young athletes on a dog sled ride through the North Woods.
Then one of the kids said something that stopped him cold.
“I’d love to drive a dog team.”
“Well, that’s not what I meant,” Hicks laughs now. “But that’s what he heard.”
That moment changed things for Hicks, who owns Cast Outdoor Adventures in Ely. He realized he’d never even considered whether someone in a wheelchair could mush their own team. Nobody really had, because nobody makes adaptive dog sleds.
So, Hicks decided to build one.
Three years and several sled prototypes later, Hicks and his testing partner, Ralph DeQuebec, are breaking trail into routes that haven’t seen dog teams in 15 years. A couple days before, they pushed through snow up to mid-thigh, Hicks wielding a brush ax while the team held the dogs at bay.
This is not your groomed-trail, carnival-ride dog sledding.
“There’s a time and a place for those kind of things,” Hicks said. “But that’s not what we’re here to do.”
DeQuebec, a 42-year-old former Marine, double amputee, two-time Paralympic Sled Hockey gold medalist, and coach at the sled hockey camp, was all in from the start. Not for himself, necessarily, but for the families who’d been shut out.
“I was thinking about all the kids that have families out here that it’s probably a group activity they’re never able to participate in,” he said. “To be locked out of that for so long is so unacceptable.”
So he became the test pilot, the proof of concept. Next month, he’ll showcase what they’ve built on a much bigger stage: leading the dog sled teams at the 2026 Klondike Dog Derby in Excelsior.
The current sled is a beast of incremental improvements. Independent brakes on each side let you steer by dragging right or left. The seat pitches forward and sits three-quarters of an inch higher than the last version, seemingly minor tweaks that make all the difference when you need to help your dogs pull uphill.
Hicks said when you hit a hill, you don’t just sit there. You hop off and help your dog team get up the hill. Ralph needed to be able to do something comparable.
“Otherwise, you have to overpower the situation with more dog power, which makes it inherently unsafe,” Hicks said. “Because 90 percent of the time you don’t need that extra power. You’re trying to control it. And it’s all for that 10 percent of the time you need it to get up a hill.”
Each sled is designed for two people. A guide can ride along for initial instruction before the participant learns to drive the team on their own. Hand controls allow for steering while seated rather than standing. The sleds have been used by participants with mobility limitations, traumatic brain injuries, and by youth and veterans with disabilities.
The sleds are built from off-the-shelf parts from a North Dakota manufacturer, which is important because using standardized parts keeps the cost down. A baseline racing sled runs $5,000 with a six-month wait. Custom adaptive work? Try $10,000 to $15,000.
The Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board saw the potential and kicked in a $6,000 matching grant for parts.
“You can’t wait on the industry to produce something you need,” Hicks said. “If you do, it’s going to be a barrier to entry just because of the cost.”
Last year, Cast Outdoor Adventures took 40 people with disabilities dog sledding. This year they’re at a dozen or so, with bookings stacked through March.
The trips cost the same as they would for anyone else, which matters to Hicks. Adaptive trips are already harder to run profitably because there is typically one client per trip instead of eight.
“We don’t want it to be free because when things are free, people are not invested in the experience,” he said. “But we don’t want it to cost more than it would cost anybody else. Let’s just break down the barriers and just make it even.”
There’s a progression built into the program. First trip, a guide drives while you ride and learn. Then shared responsibility. Then, if you’re serious about it, your run your own team.
The dream? Multi-day trips into the Boundary Waters. Fishing trips. Camping trips. Real wilderness travel, off-trail adventures in the BWCAW.
DeQuebec has fallen hard for mushing, particularly the wordless conversation between musher and dogs.
“Having to learn how to communicate through dogs, what they’re doing with their bodies, what they’re telling you, that non-verbal communication is very important in leadership,” he said. “As a 42-year-old trying to teach leadership to kids, I can’t teach them combat leadership with combat lessons. I get to teach combat leadership through dog mushing now. It’s just trying to find a different language to be able to speak with them with what I know.”
Every August, Hicks helps run a sled hockey combine that takes 32 paraplegic athletes into the Boundary Waters for 14 miles of paddling and 22 portages, completely unassisted. Kids as young as eight. No one has ever failed to finish.
“I take able-bodied people all summer long,” Hicks said. “They bitch and complain about their back hurting or their feet hurting or the bugs. I’m like, well, that’s funny because I took a bunch of kids out and they didn’t complain as much as you do. So why don’t you just shut up and keep moving?”
He’s making a point about what he calls “shadow barriers,” the perceived limits that aren’t actually real.
“They’re just a hologram,” he says. “If they just push forward and walk through it, they’ll realize it’s not actually real.”
The adaptive dog sledding program fights the same shadows. That overarching societal oppression, as DeQuebec puts it, that says “you can’t do that” or “that’s too dangerous.”
“We need to be encouraging them but also providing a safe outlet so they can actually break down some of these barriers and move forward,” Hicks said.
With the sled design mostly proven, the plan is to build a fleet, three or four more sleds that can be leased to kennels on the coasts, spreading the program beyond the North Woods. Off-the-shelf parts, proven design, eight hours to assemble.
DeQuebec’s advice for anyone with a disability thinking about trying it?
“Get off their asses and get out and do it.”