​Paralyzed Pilot Goes Beyond His Limits

The Sierra Nevada has a way of telling the truth. Up high, the air is thin, the consequences are real, and the horizon keeps daring you to go one ridge farther.

It’s the kind of country that makes a Carbon Cub FX-3 feel less like a machine and more like a key that unlocks backcountry places most people only ever see from a trailhead sign or satellite map. To me, it opens the door to something even bigger—a return to the wild places that shaped my life long before aviation became my calling.

Lifelong Obsession

I grew up near Lake Tahoe and was a kid with a disdain for terrestrial confinement. I was always chasing the next way to get airborne, even if it was only for a moment—bikes, skis, motorcycles, snowmobiles. One helicopter ride, set up by my father when I was 16, sealed it. The turbine spooled, the skids lifted, and my world changed for the good. 

This Article First Appeared in FLYING Magazine

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Years later, my path looked like it would follow a different trajectory. I built a career in nanotechnology and engineering—work that fed my hunger for problem solving and precision. But the aviation dream never left. When I met Shawna, my soulmate, teammate, and steady force behind so many of my “impossible” goals, she asked a simple question that rearranged my life completely: “If you could do anything in this life and all your needs were met, what would you do?”

My answer was immediate, vulnerable and truthful: I’d long dreamed of  becoming  an EMS pilot to use aviation in moments when it can truly save a life. Shawna didn’t just support the dream—she put it on a calendar. “Tomorrow,” she told me. “Tomorrow, you begin working on your pilot’s license.” 

I jumpe in with both feet. I trained hard with my instructor, Matt Peek, in a Beechcraft C-23 Sundowner, and got close…so close that the check ride was the only thing standing between me and my private pilot certificate. 

The Day Everything Changed

Then came March 5, 2010.

I was out filming a snowmobiling segment in the Sierra Nevada backcountry when I overshot a jump, landed too hard, and burst-fractured my first lumbar vertebra. The accident damaged my spinal cord and left me paralyzed from the waist down. My foundation was rocked, and the timing was anything but kind. I was a newlywed on the doorstep of becoming a pilot. That dream now felt a million miles away. 

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In the immediate aftermath, my world could have become smaller—bound to the earth, medical appointments, and the quiet grief of a dream that felt stolen. But Shawna refused to let my story end there. In the intensive care unit, I overheard her calling my flight instructor: “He’s not going to make the check ride…yet.” Yet I felt I’d hit rock bottom. 

Recognizing my disbelief, Shawna approached my bedside, put her hand on my heart, and said, “You can borrow my confidence until you have your own, but you are taking that test.” I thought she was out of her mind. I remember thinking that I’d prove her wrong, but not in the right way.

Recovery took time, pain, and an uncommon brand of grit. I’ve always been drawn to the edge of what’s possible, the skinny branches if you will. Within two years of the accident, and to raise funds and spinal cord injury awareness for the High Fives Foundation, I set a goal so outrageous it sounded like fiction—ski the final degree of latitude to Antarctica’s South Pole.

Against All Odds

In January 2012, I became the first spinal cord-injured athlete to reach the South Pole, propelling myself across the Antarctic plateau on a sit-ski through brutal cold and relentless winds. The expedition didn’t just test my body. It reshaped my commitment to rise.  

In a moment that’s become emblematic of my philosophy, I told reporters, “It’s not about what I’ve done. It’s about what I’m going to do.” The expedition wasn’t simply survival, it was intentional optimism. Being comfortable with being uncomfortable is a great gift. 

Throughout it all, one dream kept calling louder than the rest—flight.

Aviation is both art and engineering, equal parts wonder and systems. If the accident introduced a new set of constraints, I approached them like a pilot: Identify the problem, reduce the risk, build a solution…aviate, navigate, communicate. I persisted through a rigorous process to regain medical certification, ultimately earning an FAA first-class medical certificate, an achievement that required years of testing, documentation, and determination. The FAA and all who were associated were fair and fantastic to work with. 

In 2019, and with the belief and support of Chris Barbera of Mountain Lion Aviation—nine years after that fateful day that seemed to end it all—I earned my private pilot certificate, fulfilling the long dream Shawna and I refused to
surrender. 

What followed wasn’t a quiet “bucket list” moment. It was momentum. 

Turning Flight Into Force for Good

Today, I’m a CFI, CFII, MEI, typed-jet instructor pilot and co-founder of AOA Jets, a bespoke aircraft management company. Shawna and I have built a life around a powerful belief: Aviation can change a person’s internal weather, all with a single flight.

In 2021, we founded the Moment Foundation, an aviation-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit with a mission centered on perspective-shifting experiences, offering hero flights for veterans, active military, first responders, and people navigating life-altering challenges, as well as humanitarian flying that includes animal rescue missions. In one rescue effort we flew 18 puppies in the foundation’s Cirrus SR22T to new lives of love and comfort. We had found new ways to serve. For us, this is the point—not just to fly but help others rise above.

Backcountry Freedom

Then came the Cub.

A longtime friend, Shawn Linch, introduced me to backcountry aviation with a ride in his Carbon Cub FX-3. 

That flight reignited something deep—a forgotten sense of backcountry freedom, adventure for the sake of adventure, and pure aviation joy. More than flying, the experience reminded me of the sensations I felt in my former life as a professional athlete: critical decision making, evaluation of exposure, and the placement of oneself in and out of complex environments. 

I decided to pursue my tailwheel endorsement. Cade Boeger, a competitive aerobatic pilot, jetman, and agricultural and fire pilot legend, believed in me and helped me earn my endorsement in an American flag-themed Super Decathlon. From there, I was all in. In September 2025, with an amazing aircraft partner and friend, we took delivery of our own FX-3.  

Now, having the chance to explore these wild places again from an incredible machine in the sky feels like an awakening and a return to something my soul never forgot. I can again appreciate the changes in temperature and smell that wake up the senses again. The way wind moves across terrain. The problem solving and critical thinking that leads you to a quiet moment on a mountaintop. These are all the freedoms I once knew and had forced
myself to forget.

The FX-3 isn’t about escaping my new reality, it’s about expanding it. It allows me to visit the rivers I used to kayak and the trails I used to backpack. It gives me back something simple and profound—proximity to nature on my own terms.

For a guy whose life once revolved around solo access to the wild and untouched corners of this planet, a spinal cord injury temporarily took that exploration off the menu. 

Aviation, along with Shawna and the many incredible people who believed in this dream, gave it back to me.

Today, my flying life looks like what I always wanted it to be—purposeful, adventurous, and shared. In any given week, I’m carving through the Tahoe basin, slipping out toward the Nevada desert, chasing dirt strips and daylight…laughing on the radio, swapping stories, and building new memories.

Every takeoff matters. Every landing is earned. And every flight is a reminder that the third dimension is still there, waiting, no matter what gravity has taken. 

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From Grant’s heart: Thank you Shawna for always empowering me to soar…both in the air and on the ground. Thank you to Mountain Lion Aviation, both the Truckee and Reno airports, Swift Institute, Atlantic Aviation, Cub Crafters, Cirrus, Lift, Bose, Precise Flight, Sky Trails and the following families: Trautwein, Knauf, Gifford, Rameker, Hansen, Korgan, McNeely, Barbera, Linch, Leverett, Parker, Boeger, Palmer, Lynch, Abel, Arbaugh, Scott, Reilly, Peek, Sloane, Lee, and so many others for breaking glass ceilings and empowering this path into the sky.

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Read more of Grant’s story in his own words here. 

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This feature first appeared in the May Issue 970 of the FLYING print edition.