He was having a good time hanging around Gritstone Climbing and Fitness while Dan and Mark Koepke caught up — the kid, that is.
Gritstone is the fitness center in Sabraton where people go to learn the basics of rock climbing. Last week, a group of them came out to hear Dan Koepke talk about his pursuits in the sport.
Dan is inching his way into rarefied air as a world-ranked ice-climber, a sport that is exactly what it says it is. More on that.
His father, Mark, is a WVU physics professor and outdoors enthusiast who introduced his son to the wonders of Mount Rainier, during his doctorate days in Washington state.
And that kid?
Well, as said, he was just hanging around, safely harnessed and thoroughly instructed, at a prime viewing perch near the top of Gritsone’s signature climbing wall.
The father and son didn’t know it, but he was right at eye-level with them, as they talked on the second floor of the facility on Eljadid Street.
He even gave a little wave to a visitor with a notebook, in fact.
Dan Koepke laughed, after learning later of the elevated interloper.
“He was there the whole time? That’s funny. I would have loved it if we had places like this when I was growing up here. I would have been doing the same thing.”
Thin air, (sometimes, not-so) thick ice, and the moment that is the moment
Koepke, the climber, was in town last week at Gritstone to conduct a workshop on the basics of climbing and to talk about a passion where one has to return the same way one scaled.
As said, he’s getting a real foothold these days in ice climbing, that pursuit where mountaineers scale peaks with sheer faces of frozen ice, frozen waterfalls and the like.
He likes it because of techniques such climbers have to deploy to be successful.
Up they go, using futuristic-looking ice axes and super-sharp hooks resembling the accessories a James Bond or Marvel villain might deploy for criminal mayhem on the big screen.
The Morgantown Mountaineer-turned-mountaineer uses them to head up the frozen liquid wall that can transfix, with swirling, out-worldly beauty.
It’s a sanctioned effort.
Ice-climbers work under the auspices of the International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation, the governing body that wants to turn it into an Olympic sport.
Even with a rule book, the sport is dangerous, just because.
There are tales of climbers accidentally cutting themselves on the tools while in competition, leaving gashes that need stitched up in the ER after they come back down.
There are the accounts from free-climbers who, after deciding at the last-second not to scale a face because it’s been in the noonday sun, watch — fascinated and scared at the same time — as the whole thing crashes in an ice avalanche because their instincts were right.
And through it all … there’s the lyricism.
“You just get beautiful feelings of motion and clarity,” he said.
“And you’re visualizing moves before you make them.”
The gravity of the situation
Koepke, 38, took up climbing in his teens.
He’s climbed on four continents and has also led expeditions across South America and Asia.
That’s while cresting peaks for fun in Wyoming and Alaska, where he lived for several years.
He’s also placed high on the scoreboard during ice climbing events in the Czech Republic and Switzerland.
Koepke qualified for the Team USA squad in 2020, but its international competitions abroad were grounded due to the pandemic.
While he’s approaching 40, ice climbing isn’t necessarily the province of, say, a climber in his late teens or 20s, as is the case with elite athletes in other sports.
“You have to learn the techniques and store them,” he said. “Takes a long time to develop the skill-set.”
An ice climber in his 40s, he’ll say with nary a hint of a pun, might literally be at his peak.
In coming days, Koepke hopes to peak again.
He will again vie for the national team during tryouts on an ice wall in Michigan.
In June, he left his post at the University of Alaska at Anchorage — he taught physics like his old man — and put his touring and climbing instruction business off to the side, to fully focus on training for the tryout.
He relocated to the Lower 48 and Boulder, Colo., the hot spot for ice climbers training and competing from the U.S. and the world over.
“I was disappointed last year when I couldn’t go international with the team,” he said. “I’m anxious to see how I do this time.”
Either way, he’ll be philosophical, he said, and philosophy — he knows.
He earned a degree in that subject at the University of Maryland, on top of the physics degree he took there. He also holds a graduate diploma in physics from Montana State University.
Before that, he was a student at University High School, where he excelled in his classes and played varsity football and lacrosse.
And before that, he was a little kid in the Pacific Northwest, gazing up in awe at Mount Rainier with his dad, who has made some sojourns up and down.
Of mountains, mentors and Father’s Day
Having a son who is an elite ice climber with dual degrees in physics and philosophy isn’t stretching earthly metaphors for the elder Koepke.
The globally known professor played sports in school and still enjoys the outdoors, when he isn’t mimicking the Northern Lights in his WVU lab or applying a sheath of shaving cream to a ball of aluminum foil for a unique visual in a lesson plan all about the interstellar particulars of plasma physics, his field of expertise.
Mixing science and sentiment is part of the natural order for him, he said.
Which is why he turned out for his son’s talk at Gritstone, even though he’s happily heard it all before.
“Dan knows the importance of critical thinking, setting goals and having mentors,” he said. “There’s a lot to learn in this world.”
There’s a lot of love there, too.
A few years back, a health issue put Mark Koepke in the hospital in critical condition. For a time, it didn’t look like he would make it.
When he did, Dan Koepke gave his dad a Father’s Day gift that truly topped any necktie or coffee mug.
He scaled Mount Rainier — all 14,410 feet of it — in his pop’s honor.
The first thing he did, when he got his cell service back, was to call Morgantown, while still on the side of the mountain.
“Happy early Father’s Day, Dad.”
“Top of the world, Dan.”
At Gritstone, a son settled into his talk and a dad, perched on his seat, gave a little wink of encouragement.
The kid, meanwhile, did make his way back down. Eventually.
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