On Vasu Sojitra’s very first day ever skiing, at a local hill in Connecticut, a one-legged skier appeared out of the blue. He skied up to 11-year-old Vasu and simply said, “Hey, good job, keep it up!” And then he was gone. It was a lucky and auspicious sign for Vasu, who would go on to become one of the most recognized adaptive athletes in the outdoors, with numerous achievements both in skiing as well as trail running, or “ninjasticking,” as Vasu calls it.

When Vasu was nine months old, he was diagnosed with septicemia, a blood infection, which resulted in the amputation of his right leg. As a kid, he experimented with various prosthetics, but they never worked very well. Mostly they inhibited Vasu’s ability—and strong desire—to move freely. By age 10, he had traded prosthetics for forearm crutches—aka “ninjasticks”—and never looked back.

Despite that rather serendipitous initial interaction with another one-legged skier, Vasu was more or less on his own when it came to learning how to ski with one leg. The adaptive sports industry was on the rise, but hadn’t been quite noticed by Vasu just yet, but luckily he had his brother, Amir Sojitra, to lean on. While still being that irritating older sibling many of us can relate to, Amir was a major force in encouraging him and pushing him to excel with the right amount of tough love and care.

Vasu partly grew up in India, where his parents, Rama and Hasu Sojitra, are from, and where he witnessed extreme poverty. Those experiences influenced him to become an advocate not only for the Disabled community but for all historically marginalized groups.

Some of Vasu’s achievements include being the first Disabled athlete to ski off of Denali via The West Buttress and the Fuhrer Finger off of Tacoma (Mt. Rainier) with his fellow friend and amputee Pete McAfee, The Skillet of off Mt. Moran, and so many other ski lines in the United States and Canada. Along with many of his ski achievements he has completed the Beaten Path (28 miles) in the Beartooth Mountain Range, Montana, the 28k Run The Rut, and was the first adaptive skier to stick a 720 spin. He’s also completed the first Disabled ascents on crutches of the Grand Teton in Wyoming, Granite Peak in Montana, and Cotopaxi in Ecuador and among dozens of other peaks around the world.

Now based in Bozeman, Vasu focuses primarily as a professional athlete and a Disability access strategist.