Groundbreaking hiking wheelchair to take on Camino de Santiago Pilgrimage

A groundbreaking hiking wheelchair that has been used for hikes across the globe is set to take on the Camino de Santiago Pilgrimage this Spring.

Omer Zur created the groundbreaking wheelchair to make sure his father, an injured military veteran, did not miss out on a post-army hiking trip in 2008. Since then the wheelchair has been across the globe and is set to take on the Camino de Santiago Pilgrimage in Spring.

In an interview with ISRAEL21c, Zur stated: “Thirty-five years after his injury, I decided that I’m going to fill in this gap of a post-army trip that he never had.” 

“I did a few things ahead of it: First, I checked whether he’s interested, and he said yes. Second, I thought how we’re going to do it. After checking out all sorts of platforms and chairs that were on the market, we found that none of them suited our needs, so we decided to develop the Trekker.” 

Finally, the last decision was to make the trip a social event. “We invited 34 friends to come hiking with us – my dad’s childhood friends, his current friends and also friends of mine. We traveled the Taurus Mountains in Turkey for a month,” explained Zur.

The hike wasn’t without its challenges, with Omer Zur and his company sleeping in tents and cooking on fires: “We weren’t going to go easy on ourselves. And during that trek I saw and understood a few things that led me to found Paratrek.” 

Since then Paratrek has taken different groups on hikes around the globe including Australia, Jordan, France and the United States and even to Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, in joint cooperation with Friends of Access Israel.

“Together we conquered Kilimanjaro, and together we also started this journey of spreading our methodology and Trekkers in the US, and we’re hoping to continue with this great cooperation in the future,” Zur stated.

This Spring the organisation will be hiking the legendary Camino de Santiago pilgrimage in Spain.