Written by Vapur Pro Team member, Laura Bylund. Cottage Rehabilitation Hospital, UCSB Department of Recreation and Vapur, July 22-26, 2013

Every summer, about 45 children and teens with disabling diseases, disorders and spinal cord injuries come from far and wide to the UCSB Recreation Center for a week of intense sporting organized by Santa Barbara Cottage Rehabilitation Hospital. They play basketball and volleyball, racquetball and rugby. They go swimming and handcycling, and have tennis lessons with three-time Paralympian, Anthony Lara. They also engage in adventure activities such as kayaking, ropes course, SCUBA and, of course, what kind of sports camp would be complete without rock climbing?

Real interest in adaptive climbing has been sparked among many wheelchair users across the globe. Perhaps it is the sport of rock climbing becoming more mainstream, or maybe inspiration from famous disabled athletes such as blind mountaineer, Erik Weihenmayer, incomplete tetraplegic competition climber, Fran Brown and the more recent scaling of El Capitan by Stephen Wampler, who has cerebral palsy. Either way, despite the growing interest, working with people with disabilities is still a very complex and out of the ordinary thing for most vertical sports professionals and high angle rope workers.

The Junior Wheelchair Sports Camp has both excited and panicked me for nearly a decade. Beyond the usual concerns that come with any children’s program, including the naturally worrisome parents and doting caretakers, each year purports a completely new test for me and my staff. The kids come to us both excited and terrified themselves, and we are responsible for the quality of their experience.

News & Events April 5, 2013

Wilderness First Responder Course
March 23-31, Wilderness Medical Associates, UC Santa Barbara

Written by Vapur Pro Team member, Laura Bylund.

There are three critical systems in the human body that support life: the circulatory, the respiratory and the nervous systems.  Since each is dependent on the other, they are often analogized to a three-legged stool where all need to be functioning properly in order to stay upright.  The respiratory system brings crucial oxygen into the body, the circulatory system distributes it throughout to vitalize tissue and organs and the nervous system controls… well, basically everything.

Each critical system has major threats that could lead to failure and if that happens to of any one of them, the three-legged stool falleth over. With the respiratory system, we worry about obstructions and broncospasms that lead to respiratory distress.  With the nervous system, we fear increased intracranial pressure and other threats to brain function, as well as spinal cord injuries.

The circulatory system’s nemesis is volume and vascular shock.  This is where blood volume decreases in relation to the size of veins and arteries; the ultimate worry is that blood pressure will drop so low that it is unable to adequately perfuse the body’s organs with that crucial oxygen.  While volume shock is certainly caused by severe bleeding, the most common danger to the circulatory system is actually dehydration.

Written by Vapur Pro Team member, Laura Bylund.

Vapur has changed my life. There I said it. It has fundamentally altered and facilitated daily hydration in the outdoors in a way I would never think such a simplistic product would or even could.

I remember when I got my first bladder-like product and thought how incredibly it had revolutionized the sport of alpine climbing. The idea that you could hydrate through a gigantic hose-shaped straw whilst on the move and not spill all over yourself was relieving. The notion that there was no longer a need to expel time and energy taking off your heavy backpack or twisting and contorting your body to reach a bottle in the side pocket was almost titillating.

Reality struck when bladders started to puncture, pop or leak at the hose inlet, wasting precious water supply, soaking my belongings and now rendering an important piece of gear useless and dead weight.  Even if I was lucky enough to have one that lasted, the horrendously involved cleaning process made me simply want to throw it away and buy another one. After a while, I decided that my time was worth more money than the product.

News & Events

Vapur was the exclusive water bottle of the Reel Rock Film Tour screening in Santa Barbara on Wednesday, November 14th.  Organized by award-winning, even Emmy-nominated filmmakers, this climbing film tour has joined the ranks of the best adventure film tours in the world, now even outperforming most of them in its 7th year.

This leg of the tour is hosted by the official outdoor program at the University of California Santa Barbara and has been held in Isla Vista Theater, one of the largest venues of its hundreds of stops worldwide, since the tour’s inception.

An Element for the Elements ~ October 6-7, 2012

Written by Vapur Pro Team member, Laura Bylund

On October 6 and 7, with a little help from the Vapur Element Anti-Bottle, a team of adventurers from the University of California, Santa Barbara braved a few good canyons in the San Gabriel Mountains of the Angeles National Forest.

Canyoneering is a sport particularly sensitive to hydration and energy management. Dehydration is cause for many ailments in the human body and we are especially at risk when in the harsh elements of the great outdoors.  A typical canyon route imposes a series of slippery down climbs and steep rappels off waterfalls in a cold, wet environment.  The coordination, physical fitness and knowledge required of executing such tasks assumes that even a completely healthy canyoneer could have trouble getting out safely.

“Hydration is incredibly crucial to physical performance,” says Rod Tucknott, Director of UCSB Adventure Programs and a Wilderness Medical Associates instructor.  ”In fact many medical problems that aren’t so obvious, such as hyperthermia and hypothermia, are often exacerbated if not caused by dehydration.”