In Isère, the mountain accessible by joëlette for people with disabilities

The undergrowth of the Vercors welcome hikers not quite like the others. In single file, walkers-guides and people with disabilities seated on a joëlette. This all-terrain wheelchair allows disabled people to discover the joys of hiking.

Five one-week stays are scheduled to complete a long loop in the heart of the Vercors massif. In this joyful troop, about fifteen walkers, all volunteers, supervise five to six people with disabilities. Only two people at the front can drive this funny wheeled machine called the joëlette, originally designed by a mountain guide who wanted to continue taking his myopathic nephew on rides.

If at the beginning, the joëlette was made in a traditional way, a slightly different industrial model very quickly emerged. Today, it is a company from Saint-Etienne that strives to improve the product.

For the guides, it is an opportunity to experience an exceptional holiday and to share the joy of hiking with disabled people. Once the march is over, everyone ends up in the same bivouac. Here again, volunteers help by accompanying people with disabilities to dress, wash and feed themselves. So many tasks that bring valid and invalid closer and that require a good dose of complicity. “They give us a lot. They make us want to surpass ourselves, communication and living together are permanent”, says a guide.

This roaming is organized by the Handicap Évasion association, which has 900 members. It is she who supplies the joëlettes. Each year, it makes the mountain accessible to hundreds of people with disabilities. The association is present in several regions of France. No less than nine branches make it possible to practice the joëlette throughout the year, by offering day trips or weekends on bucolic paths as well as on steep paths.

The Auvergne and Loire branches organize outings even in winter, using the joëlettes on the snow thanks to specific equipment that fits under the wheel.