BAM BRIDGES

When Bam Bridges wrecked his bike while racing at Arizona Cycle Park, he thought his career – and life – were over. The accident severely damaged his spine, leaving him paralyzed. Now a T5 paraplegic, Bam is a pioneer in the nascent world of para-motocross and is working on qualifying for the X Games.

I grew up under the shadows of Mount Hood, Mount Saint Helens, and Mount Adams. Then I moved to Utah, and now I live daily under the shadow of the Wasatch range, with the Rockies and the Uintas a stone’s throw away. So when I say I have zero excuse to have never been skiing or snowboarding, I mean it. Especially after meeting Bam Bridges.

Not only did he travel from California to Utah to pick up skiing – a new sport outside of his main skillset – but he learned how to ski without functioning legs.

“I got paralyzed December 1, 2017 at the AC Open,” Bam tells me after his tmrw photoshoot. It's been just over seven years since the accident that changed his life forever. “I was racing, trying to become a pro. It was the first race of the whole event. Super muddy track, and I just came up short on a jump and went head over bars and right into the ground. I tried to save it, so I still had the bike in between my legs. And then the bike kind of crushed me into the ground, and then I scorpioned.”

When the speed of the fall and the weight of the bike compressed his body, he bent the entire structure of his chest in half. “I broke my chest and my sternum. Had to get two brackets there and five vertebrae in my back. And then when I was laying there on the ground, I thought my heels were touching the back of my head for like an hour. I kept asking people to put my legs straight until I finally saw my legs in front of me, but in my mind – how it felt – they were still touching my head.”

Bam says he’s lucky to be a T5 Incomplete, meaning that although he’s paralyzed, he still has some sensation and has the possibility of recovering over time. Despite this future hope, Bam has had to completely adjust to a new reality. That reality includes fearlessly pursuing all of his former extreme sport passions – and acquiring new ones – while joining the ranks of paralyzed pioneers who are making these sports accessible for the first time.

When he headed out on the slopes in Park City, Utah, he was learning how to sit ski. “Sit skiing was cool,” he laughs. “I mean, I've never been on the snow before, even before my injury. So just getting on ice was wild in itself. It looks so easy from an outside perspective in videos you'll see. But once you get on it, you know you have no control, really. You're just sliding down a mountain, and you gotta learn how to basically catch yourself from falling down a hill.”

Bam started on the easiest training slopes in the morning and progressively worked his way up to real runs by the end of the day.

“The first time down was sick. But I ate shit about another 20 times,” he laughs. 

Bam wanted to get into sit skiing after building out his cage – the contraption that protects his strapped-in legs from injury while he’s riding his dirtbike. While working on it, he had friends tell him to watch Full Circle, the film about Trevor Kennison and his experience becoming an adaptive ski racing icon after a similar life-altering accident in 2014.

“I watched Full Circle, found out about Trevor Kennison, his story, watched him sit ski, and he makes it look like it's the funnest thing in the world,” Bam recalls. “He has, like, an infectious laugh. If he's laughing like that, you definitely want to hop on a sit ski.”

Bam’s friend, Dustin Rupp, works for GoPro and knew Trevor Kennison personally. “He got us in contact, and I talked to Trevor a bunch” Bam says. After that, Bam was talking with Mark Cook, the founder of Numbskull. Numbskull is an athletic gear and clothing company based in Salt Lake City, Utah that specializes in ski, snowboard, and motocross gear – and happens to be one of Bam’s sponsors. He floated the idea of learning how to ski, and soon Mark put Bam in touch with Gilbert Camacho, a double amputee and sit ski instructor, and set up a trip to Park City. 

“Dude, he's insane,” Bam says of Gilbert. “Watching him backflip rail-to-rail on a sit ski is mind-blowing.”

Bam’s ability to acquire new skills, improve his existing ones, and make life easier for fellow athletes with his condition is both innate and earned.

He was a go-getter before his accident who trained hard and had realistic dreams of qualifying for the X Games. Most people never even come close to that level of drive or skill. But his accident, while nearly extinguishing all of those dreams, also acted as a catalyst for him to do something truly transcendent and to amplify his efforts far beyond personal success. Now, in addition to personal athletic goals, he’s pouring his life into making the world a better place for those who need it most.

“When I was still living in the hospital, I lived there for about three months,” he explains. “When I first got injured, I was just depressed and I kind of gave up on the world. I just wanted to die. I didn't have any goals. I just floated. So I sat there and didn't care, didn't worry about anything, and was in a very negative perspective and was very pessimistic.”

It wasn’t until his friend Devin had an extremely blunt talk with him that Bam desired to change. It was the kind of frank talk that only best friends with a deep trust in each other can have. “He just said: ‘If you want to change something, you gotta change it for yourself because no one's going to fucking help you.’ And it kind of dawned on me, and I just woke up after that and I realized I had to help myself.”

While it was incredibly difficult, Bam is grateful for his time spent in the darkness. “I was now able to control my emotions,” he says. “I knew I was sad and depressed and didn't want anything for myself, but I pushed myself to be happy because if you want to be happy, you'll eventually be happy. And through that, I found joy with the small things, like making jokes about my injury with my buddies, going out and hanging out with friends. There was more I was willing to go do just to try to put a smile on my face even if I knew I wasn't in a good mood." 

Bam has now been competing as a para-athlete for almost three years. When he got back on a dirtbike again for the first time after his accident, he had to completely start over. While he still had his sense of balance, he discovered very quickly that the rules of the game had changed for him.

"As soon as I went to hit an actual jump, I had no control in the air without legs,” he laughs. His re-training also taught him how vital it is to have good engineering on your side as a para-athlete. "You have suspension on a bike, but when you jump or bottom out, you have legs that your muscles will contract to give you a whole second set of suspension. So now, when I flat land, it goes straight through my spine. So I have no legs at the bottom to help me out.”

This has led to many hours in the garage making adjustments to his adaptive bike. Over time, Bam has become an expert in his field. “A few months ago we had out my buddy Tyson McPhee, who's a para. He's a 16-year-old kid who went through an unfortunate accident with a driver. But we got him up to the track, and he was riding, and I was showing him how to ride.” He’s been able to mentor and work with para-athletes all over the world.

Even though he’s getting the hang of everything, not everything goes perfectly. During a session with Tyson McPhee, he once overshot a jump by 30 feet because they prepped the lip differently from what he was used to. “From right where my hips connect to my femurs all the way up to where my lower rib cage is completely locked,” Bam says, still visibly wincing from the pain. He played it cool, though. “I didn't want to scare him because it was his first day riding.” It took about two hours for his muscles to stop spasming.

It’s wild to me that Bam continues to do the very thing that paralyzed him – day in and day out. Fear, flashbacks, anxiety – so many internal stressors would prevent lesser men (like me) from ever trying again. But in the last three years, Bam has transitioned from four-foot jumps to 95-foot jumps.

“That’s insane,” I blurt out involuntarily when he tells me this. I’m shocked.

He laughs. “Most of my buddies won’t even hit that jump.”

His courageous re-entry into the world of motocross has earned him sponsors all over the world. In addition to Numbskull, he’s also working with MotoDemption, Claybourne Co., Luxon Engineering, AEO Powersports, and many more.

In the short term, Bam’s next goal is to hit an FMX Ramp and do Mammoth Motocross or Ricky Carmichael Supercross. In the long term, he wants to win X Games Best Whip as a paraplegic. “So I have to qualify for X Games on the dirt bike, obviously,” he laughs. “And then I want to be the first paraplegic to do quarter pipe, because I don't think anyone's thought of that. And every time I bring that up, everyone thinks I'm psycho. But I think I'll manage it with some time.”

Bam acknowledges frequently and openly that he wouldn’t be here without the support of his dad at home, on the track, and in the garage. “My dad helps me. And he’s learning that there's a YouTube for a reason,” he jokes, referring to his dad looking things up when he doesn’t know what to do. Many times, though, they have to figure certain things out together all on their own. “Being adaptive, of course, there's no YouTube for that. So you just have to figure shit out.”

I ask what he wishes more people knew about adaptive sports. “Most people just look at it and just think, ‘Oh, their legs can't work.’ But a lot of people like myself, for instance, I'm paralyzed from the chest down, so I have no core control, no ab control,” he explains. 

"Some of these dudes have the gnarliest mindset, and they've pulled themselves out of really dark places and got to the place where they're doing stuff that every other normal dude is doing with not even close to what they have. I think that should be shined on a lot more – that these dudes get out there and really find a way to get it done.”

He also explains that there aren’t many competitions for para-athletes in extreme sports. “In motocross, we don’t even have a class. Like, I go race dudes with legs,” he laughs. “I just go race straight-up normal dudes. I definitely feel like the professional side of adaptive sports needs an upgrade or a lot more attention. I know it comes down to leadership. I want adaptive sports to get televised right with the pros and the other guys. People want to go watch some gnarly-ass dudes ski down a mountain with two arms and no legs.”

Bam Bridges stares into the abyss every time he’s about to hit a jump. For most people, they have to overcome the fear of what could happen to them. For Bam, he has to overcome the fear of what actually did happen to him. And he does it every day. It’s a kind of grit and determination I have never encountered before in my entire life, and I tell him so.

Proudly, he smiles. “Now I’m a better rider than I was before my accident. And I'm terrified. I’m absolutely terrified.”

So how does he overcome that terror? Calculation, respect, and commitment.

“I'll be really calculated with how I approach things because I don't have my legs. There's no cockiness. I'm completely giving respect to the track, and I commit. Because if I don't, I know what's going to happen. You know what happens when you don't commit fully to something? That's when you get really hurt.”

You can follow Bam Bridges and his budding motocross career on Instagram here.