Meet Joe Stone

Joe Stone is the founder of Unified Dirt, a consulting company focused on helping public lands, trail organizations, and outdoor communities create better experiences for people with disabilities and the people they recreate alongside.

In 2010, Joe's life changed in an instant when a speed flying accident in Missoula, Montana left him with an incomplete C7 spinal cord injury. The crash resulted in multiple spinal fractures, a month-long medically induced coma, and a diagnosis that would permanently alter the course of his life. An outdoor athlete whose world revolved around adventure, Joe suddenly found himself learning how to navigate life as a wheelchair user while rebuilding his independence from the ground up.

Rather than walking away from the outdoors, Joe made it his mission to return to the places and activities he loved. Within a year of his injury, he hand-cycled Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier National Park. In 2013, he became the first known wheelchair-using quadriplegic to attempt a full IRONMAN triathlon, a journey chronicled in the award-winning documentary It's Raining, So What. Along the way, Joe discovered that many of the greatest barriers facing people with disabilities were not physical limitations, but a lack of opportunity, understanding, and inclusion.

That realization led to the creation of the Joe Stone Foundation in 2012. Through the foundation, Joe worked to bridge the gap between people with and without disabilities by integrating adaptive athletes into existing outdoor recreation events rather than creating separate experiences. One of the most successful examples was the Wydaho Rendezvous, where Joe helped develop the adaptive mountain bike component of the festival. What started with a handful of riders grew into one of the largest adaptive mountain bike gatherings in the country, while remaining fully integrated into a larger mountain bike festival attended by hundreds of riders of all abilities. The model was simple: create opportunities for people to recreate together.

Joe later served as Executive Director of Teton Adaptive in Jackson, Wyoming, where he worked directly with hundreds of individuals with disabilities while helping expand opportunities throughout the Greater Yellowstone region. Through partnerships with Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, Grand Targhee Resort, Bridger Teton National Forest, Grand Teton National Park, Grand Teton National Park Foundation, outfitters, guides, and recreation providers, Joe helped create pathways for people with disabilities to experience skiing, mountain biking, paddling, paragliding, hiking, and other outdoor adventures alongside friends and family.

In 2023, Joe co-founded Dovetail Trail Consulting, bringing his lived experience and recreation background into the world of public lands planning and trail assessment. Over the next three years, he worked with federal agencies, state parks, trail organizations, and nonprofit partners across the country to identify barriers, provide accessibility education, collect objective trail data, and develop practical solutions that improved outdoor experiences for people with disabilities.

Today, Unified Dirt brings together everything Joe has learned over the past fifteen years: lived experience as a wheelchair user, direct service within the disability community, partnerships with public land managers, trail assessment expertise, and a lifelong passion for outdoor recreation. His work continues to focus on bridging the gap between people with and without disabilities, helping organizations better understand the real-world experiences of their visitors while creating opportunities for more people to explore, connect, and recreate together.