Adaptive skiing pioneer Bob Meserve is among the honorees being inducted into the 2025 Colorado Snowsports Museum Hall of Fame this weekend.
“Well, it's really remarkable. It's certainly not something that I ever expected or imagined that would happen to me,” Meserve said. “My good friends, when they told me they were nominating me, I just kind of laughed at them and said, ‘That's never going to happen.’ And lo and behold, here I am being inducted as part of the 2025 class.”
Meserve, who was born in Gunnison and grew up in Pueblo, started skiing when he was 4. “My love affair for skiing just took off from there. And I was an avid skier all through high school … it really has been part of my life ever since I was very little,” he said.
In 1983, a crash on Vail Mountain, which he lovingly refers to as “my home mountain,” left him paralyzed from the waist down, nearly ended his ability to enjoy his favorite pastime. “As a 20-year-old kid, you wake up scared to death, you just don't know what the future holds for you,” he said, adding that it took several days for the realization to sink in that he may never walk again. “My injury, it didn't only change the trajectory of my life, it changed the trajectory of family, of good friends, of a lot of other people around me. And it impacted their careers. It impacted lots of things that were outside of me, and yet we have all flourished.”
Instead of leaving the sport altogether, Meserve chose to help transform it. He recalled the early days after his accident when his friends inspired him to try adaptive skiing. He learned to mono-ski at Winter Park: “I would go 15 feet and crash,” recalls Meserve, with a chuckle. “My buddies would pick me up, we'd go another 15 feet and crash. My buddies picked me up and it was a long day ... they shook their heads and said, ‘This is never going to work.’”
Meserve refused to quit. “I want to come back and try again and again and again,” he recalled. “And so, I went back every opportunity I had.”
That perseverance ultimately helped him make history at Vail Mountain, still among his favorite places to swoosh down the slopes. “We wrote letters and we had conversations, and finally … they allowed me to get on snow here as the first sit-skier on Vail Mountain,” Meserve said. “It was all driven initially by my desire to go and finish the run that I got injured on.”
Every year since then, he has made a point, when he can, to ski that same run on the anniversary date of his injury, February 4.
Over the past four decades, Meserve’s leadership has extended far beyond the slopes. “In some ways, I think that my accomplishments off the field of play off snow had way more impact than anything I did on snow,” he said. “I served on the National Board of Directors for Disabled Sports USA from 1992 until 2018 … and during that time, we had 150 chapters providing opportunities for people with disabilities to participate in summer and winter sports across the country in like 45 different sports.”
Meserve also had the opportunity to carry the Olympic torch during the 2002 Salt Lake Olympic Games. “My younger brother actually nominated me to carry the torch, but I didn't know that he had nominated me until I was notified,” he said. “I was able to hand the torch off to my brother, which was a very special moment.”
Looking back, Meserve said among his proudest honors is his induction into the National Disabled Skiing Hall of Fame and receiving the Dr. Bob Harney National Leadership Award. “It was very emotional when we created that award … and then two years later, I was presented with that award. That was a real highlight for me, an emotional highlight, and probably one of my proudest moments,” he said.
Meserve describes Colorado as a longstanding “leader in adaptive sports,” especially winter sports. If anything, he would like to see more opportunities for youth. “I think that just expanding more opportunity, opening more doors for more kids, especially underprivileged kids, to participate in sport and recreation if they have a disability, is… where there's still some work that can be done,” he said.
Now, with his induction into the 2025 Colorado Snowsports Hall of Fame class, Meserve said he is most proud of what he has been able to accomplish for disabled athletes. “I became that strong voice for them in the boardroom, to fight for them, and advocate for them, to what we see today, which is better funding, better support, better recognition.”
