Portraits of Adventure / 3 Trackers / Dan
Dan
Brandywine Ski Resort, Ohio
February 2026
Inside and out, frontwards and backwards, Dan Lipka knows and understands this program and community. Now retired, he spent his career as an occupational therapist, working in clinical settings, as well as specializing as a wheelchair vendor. That last part might seem transactional, but Dan’s commitment to people extends way back to the days of finding custom solutions for people with complex problems. Even today, Dan builds highly customized solutions for students participating in 3 Trackers. His experience as a vendor and occupational therapist has given him an edge at not only problem solving, but having empathy when working with people.
Around 30 years ago, a man Dan worked with mentioned a ski program running out of Brandywine Ski Resort on Sunday mornings. Show up at nine, he said. If you ski, you've got to come. That was John Williams, one of the early mono skiers using equipment that by today's standards looks like a red bullet with no business going down a hill. Sure enough, Dan showed up, then again, and again, and again. After John passed, a ski instructor from Solon, now living in Tahoe and known nationally in adaptive ski circles, kept him coming.
He describes the program with the same matter-of-factness he probably brought to clinical assessments. Not in a cold manner, but accommodating, friendly and warm. 3 Trackers is a run fully by volunteer efforts without a large overhead budget. It's sustained by periodic fundraising, and Dan is often the one driving it. When the most recent grant application wasn't getting done, he filed it himself, pragmatic about it the same way he is about everything else. Looked at the site, filled out the boxes, sent it in. The organization has survived on that kind of unspoken persistence, his and others'. Mark, the long-running president, has kept it going for twenty years in the top role. Dan started a year or two before him.
What he comes back to, when the conversation turns from logistics to meaning, is inclusion, not as a concept but as a practical outcome. 3 Trackers puts people with disabilities on the same mountain as everyone else, doing the same thing. Not a separate program in a separate facility. The same hill, the same lifts, the same runs. He thinks that distinction matters. He's spent a lifetime watching it matter on the faces of students and volunteers.
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