Doctors told a Utah dad his daughter would never walk on her own. He built a way to get her on the trails.

Hyrum • LJ Wilde always felt he one day would use his background in mechanical engineering to enrich his daughter Luci’s life.

“I didn’t know what for,” Wilde said. “I just felt it.”

What he didn’t know was just how many lives he eventually would change.

Two years after she was born, doctors told the Hyrum resident that Luci would likely never be able to walk on her own due to a rare genetic disorder. When he learned this, his mind immediately raced to the challenges his family might face in the future.

Coming from a family that prioritized spending time in the mountains and outdoors, one of the biggest concerns was how Luci’s mobility would affect their ability to continue those adventures together, especially when she got bigger.

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For a while, Luci’s challenges didn’t stop his family from getting outside. Wilde would carry her in a pack or, at times, firefighter-style over his shoulders.

That is, until they were hiking up Blacksmith Fork Canyon, outside of Hyrum, when Luci was about 7 and she started saying she was uncomfortable. For the first time, the family had to turn around and cut the hike short.

As Wilde made his way down the trail, Luci resting on his shoulders, his thoughts raced with questions. Would this mean Luci no longer could join the family on hikes? Would it mean the end of hiking altogether for his family?

“I thought both options sucked, quite frankly,” Wilde said. “So, I was just like, ‘I’m going to change this right now.’ Before I was even back to the car, I had in my mind how I wanted to do it.”

When Wilde got home, he immediately began sketching ideas for a tandem hiking cart that would allow his daughter to comfortably enjoy the outdoors. He envisioned a chair-type design that could be pulled by another person.

Unlocking the outdoors for Luci

In the summer of 2019, Wilde worked on designing what he eventually named the Cascade.

Then life happened, and the parts he had created for the cart sat disassembled in his garage for three years. During that time, his family didn’t go on a single hike together.

One afternoon, he decided he didn’t want to keep looking at his failed experiment and decided to take it to the dump. But something made him stop.

“I got halfway outside with it, and I just got hit with a ton of bricks,” Wilde said. “It was just like, ‘That’s a really bad idea. Just finish it.‘”

So, in early 2023, Wilde hired a welder to assemble the parts he had designed, hoping the cart would be ready for Luci to use on an upcoming trip to Grand Teton National Park.

It would be.

The Cascade looks like a heavily modified mountain bike that was cut in half, with a large tire capable of tackling rugged terrain, a chair for someone to ride on and a harness that attaches to the person pulling the cart.

In June of that year, Wilde and his family went on their first hike together in three years to the park’s Hidden Falls, with Wilde pulling Luci in his invention as they wound through huckleberry bushes. From that moment on, Wilde knew the device would eliminate many barriers for his family.

“I was thinking that it’s good to be outdoors,” Luci, now 12, said of her first excursion.

Only minutes into the hike, a woman pushing a wheelchair on the trail approached the family and asked about the Cascade.

“She comes up to me and is like, ‘I need to know what that’s called,‘” Wilde said. “And I said, ‘I don’t have a name for it. I just made it in my garage. And she says, ‘Well, would you make another one?‘”

The prospect of commercializing something he made for his daughter seemed far-fetched to Wilde, so he declined, apologized to the woman and went on his way.

It wasn’t the only encounter he had that day with someone who was interested in the Cascade.

“The whole time we hiked,” Wilde said, “we almost couldn’t hike, because we would go a little ways, and then somebody would stop us and be like, ‘Oh my gosh, what is that thing? I have a neighbor. I have a niece.‘”

Still, Wilde couldn’t help but remember all the time and hard work that went into creating the first one. When he got home and couldn’t stop thinking about all the people he met on the hike and the lives he could help, something shifted inside him.

Setting up shop

That summer, he and his wife, Jana, decided it would be right for him to quit his job to focus on making the Cascade a reality for other families. At the time, Jana was pregnant with the couple’s sixth child.

“I had health insurance,” Wilde said. “I had an income that was just the same every month. It was comfortable. This is not comfortable, but I love every minute of it because of the people that we serve. It’s not just the people that we serve, it’s my own family. It’s my own daughter.”

In March 2024, Wilde launched his North Logan outdoor accessibility company, Huckleberry Hiking, and has since sold more than 1,000 Cascades to families in similar situations to his, across all 50 states and in 22 countries. Within the first 24 hours of Huckleberry Hiking’s launch, nearly 400 people bought the cart.

Wilde said the families he’s met and the stories he’s heard are what kept him going, even after facing multiple bumps in the road.

“I wasn’t OK with the status quo,” Wilde said. “And then I marched forward, with my wife kind of pushing me from behind. And then an army of people joined us and just facilitated the rest to be able to happen.”

Huckleberry Hiking will be moving to a larger facility in Cache Valley next month to produce the Cascades. Its current 800-square-foot space in North Logan has become too small. Looking ahead, Wilde envisions his business expanding to address other accessibility needs across various industries.

His next goal is to add an electric assist to the Cascade, making steep hills easier for the person pulling the cart.

“I just know the barriers it’s broken for us,” Wilde said. “It’s literally taken limits away. It’s really hard to find the limits anymore. We can just go with her wherever we want to go. If we can hike there, I can get her there.”

‘Feeling like I’m free’

When 14-year-old Phippin Tingey first rode in a Cascade cart on a mountain trail, he felt like he was flying.

“Like you’re Zelda going through the woods trying to hunt for monsters and trying to defeat them,” he said. “Or feeling like I’m free, and I don’t have to do anything.”

Phippin, who has a genetic disease that caused him to lose mobility in his legs, said that when his condition progressed in early 2023, he began experiencing cabin fever.

Hiking with friends and family had always been one of his favorite activities, but due to his size and condition, it was becoming increasingly difficult for him to join.

“I want to go outside,” Phippin said, “and do things.”

Around the same time, Wilde was gauging interest in his invention and shared information within Cache Valley about allowing others to try it. Phippin’s mother, Emily, was immediately interested.

She soon discovered Wilde lived in their Hyrum neighborhood, and he brought over a Cascade for Phippin to try in their front yard. After seeing how affordable and useful the Cascade was, the Tingeys became one of the first 50 people to purchase a prototype. Since then, Phippin and his family have been going on weekly Friday hikes, something Emily said has brought a noticeable shift in their energy and family dynamic.

“It was huge for us,” Emily said. “It brought a lot of happiness and quality of life back.”

And Phippin said the cart has helped break his cabin fever.

“Being able to catch up with other kids in my wheelchair and in the cart,” he said, “makes me feel like I belong with other kids.”

Building a ‘Huckleberry Herd’

The first time Angela Dugan took the Cascade cart on a hike with her 17-year-old daughter, Kaelyn, who has cerebral palsy, the wind was knocked out of her.

Not just because she was hiking uphill in Boulder, Colorado, where Wilde was on a tour in 2024 with the Cascade to reach more families, but also because of how much she knew the cart would change her family’s life.

“It was so important,” Dugan said, “for me to feel that again with my kid.”

Dugan said she had tried every accessible hiking chair on the market for Kaelyn, whom she described as a daredevil interested in trying almost anything outdoors. Most of the chairs didn’t make the cut.

They were either too clunky, couldn’t handle rough terrain, or were too expensive. While some hiking chairs can cost as much as $10,000, the Cascade cart is normally priced at $2,500.

When she heard about the Cascade during Wilde’s tour, she bought it on the spot.

“I never do that,” Dugan said. “I always trial. I always demo.”

The cart offered everything that her adventurous daughter would want: It worked well in the snow, it worked well on cliffsides, and it could be used for just out and about town.

It also lifted Kaelyn up to the level of others who are standing, making her feel more involved and included in her day-to-day life.

“Now, I have a teenager that’s at the height of everybody else,” Dugan said. “People don’t have to look down. People aren’t touching her hair. People aren’t leaning on her. People aren’t patting her on the head like a puppy, because of a piece of equipment that was thoughtfully designed.”

The cart has also improved Kaelyn’s condition, Dugan said. Since her daughter, who is blind and nonverbal, has been able to go out into nature and have more sensory experiences, she’s been talking more.

“It was,” Dugan said, “perfectly timed.”

Now, Dugan is spending her time trying to build a “Huckleberry Herd,” advocating for the carts to be available to rent at various outdoor recreation areas, including national parks. She plans to host a backpacking trip soon with others who use the cart.

“We’re going to peacefully protest,” she said. “We are building a different type of community I didn’t think was going to be possible for a kid like mine. Some of us are tired of waiting for someone else to do it.”

Wilde didn’t wait. He took action. And now doors are opening for his child and hundreds — someday, perhaps, thousands — of other kids.