Portraits of Adventure / 3 Trackers / Zachary, Chris & Dave
Zachary, Chris & Dave
Brandywine Ski Resort, Ohio
January 2026
Zachary, in his own way, starts asking about skiing at Halloween. By the time the season opens, he's ready to go, just like each of the ten years prior. He’s big time, too, he’s skied Alpine Valley, Mad River, West Virginia, Michigan, New York, Boston Mills, Brandywine. Turning 30 this year and not slowing down, he loves speed, first bumping lifties, and checking out the girls on the way up. For him, heat can be a limiting factor in what he can do outdoors, winter and cold is where he thrives.
His mom, Chris Markulik, hadn't skied since high school when they found 3 Trackers through a friend of Zachary's. She was nervous, but followed him down the first time with almost no idea what she was doing. They kept coming back every winter until Chris knew exactly what she was doing, how to take him off the chairlift, how to control the descent, how to keep them both safe and everyone around them safe too. 3 Trackers taught her everything she needed to know. A few years in, they purchased their own ski, and she started taking him independently, on their own schedule, outside the official program days, to other mountains. That's the goal she'd been working toward, and calls it the ultimate freedom, out on the hill with Zach, no one else needed.
Dave, her husband, is still building toward that himself. He's a couple seasons in, and learning on the same hill Zachary already knows by heart. He comes out there to support Zach and to get better himself.
Living just up the road 20 minutes, they come out on Tuesdays and Sundays. 3 Trackers is their community, their family, Chris uses both words and means them the same way. When Zachary goes down with someone else at the controls, someone other than Chris, he fist-pumps that too. For Chris, this really matters, she doesn’t want his experience to belong to her entirely.
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