The sun shone over Bromley Mountain Resort as longtime participant Binyamin Glick took steady turns down some of the blue trails on the slope. Joined by volunteer instructor Anne Castine, he spent the day skiing much as he has for the past 12 years. Now part of Vermont Adaptive’s programming at Bromley Mountain, Binyamin continues a journey that began years earlier with the same community of volunteer instructors.
Binyamin was diagnosed with leukemia at 15 months old and underwent several rounds of chemotherapy. After a five-month hospital stay, he went into remission and returned home. Six months later, he relapsed, requiring two more rounds of chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant. After another period of remission, he faced a third relapse.
“At that point, a lot of the, you know, leading hospitals suggested we just take him home and make him comfortable. But we obviously didn’t follow that advice,” said Motty Glick, Binyamin’s father. They then went to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where he continued treatment.
“He came home, and about a month or two later, he seemed to have forgotten how to speak, walk, do anything,” he said. The fear was that he had another relapse. Turns out that he just had a lot of trauma on his brain from all the treatment.”
Today, Binyamin is an independent skier who looks forward to the winter season and seeing the volunteers who have worked with him over the years. “He had a major surgery on his leg in August, and his only question to the doctor was, ‘Can I ski in January?’,” he said.
When he first came to Bromley Mountain with his parents and siblings, he stayed at Bromley’s onsite daycare. They then worked with Bart Adaptive’s team (which merged into Vermont Adaptive in July 2025) to introduce him to the resort environment with the goal of teaching him how to ski. “They would bring him over, take him outside, and he would play in the snow,” said Glick “Then slowly, you know, he put on ski boots, he’d walk around in them, and every year it was like another step.”
As the years went on, during every visit to Bromley, Bart Adaptive’s volunteer staff would meet him at his comfort level and help him grow naturally on skis, from getting used to boots and layers to riding the carpet lift and eventually the chairlift. Over time, those small steps added up.
“He would have been happy just being with the tethers, you know, and having somebody help him’ Glick said “They pushed him. Every volunteer that’s worked with him has pushed him to learn something more, to achieve, you know, more of an independence.”
Binyamin, who is now 16, spends multiple days on snow with his family and Vermont Adaptive. Every morning, he walks into the program space with a big ‘good morning,’ excited about the day to come. “I always tell people I have never met another human being who’s as happy as he is to wake up every morning. He’s just full of positivity and just goes with the flow,” Glick said.
For the Glick family, Bromley and the adaptive sports program have become a home away from home. All of Glick’s children learned to ski at Bromley, and with an adaptive program for Binyamin, it allowed him to be part of the family’s tradition.
“I think it’s just so special to have a program like this,” said Glick “It made coming to Bromley as a family with a child who needs a special program such a beautiful experience, you know, because otherwise it would have been a struggle. It’s the family dynamic—when you have one child who can’t participate in the same way the other children can, it makes planning a family experience much more difficult. But the fact that this is a seamless part of coming to Bromley, it just makes it so much more enjoyable for everyone.”