Family man lived life to fullest
All these years the people said He’s actin’ like a kid He did not know he could not fly So he did.
— “The Cape,” Guy Clark
Most of us know Icarus. The character in Greek mythology who fell to earth when his wings melted after he flew too close to the sun.
Icarus, and his modern-day counterparts, often feel most alive when they are most at risk. Since “life is just a leap of faith,” why not jump and see what happens?
When I texted my brother Mark and told him Roger Almklov had died while kiteboarding in Isabella Lake, he quoted daredevil Karl Wallenda, “Life is on the wire. The rest is just waiting.”
We grew up with Roger at the Racquet Club. He became a gifted ER physician, a husband to Chris, father to Erik and Erin and grandfather to Rochner, Leif and Huck.
Although Roger was a good tennis player, he came into his own athletically as an adult through skiing, hiking, climbing, mountaineering, kayaking, scuba diving, hang gliding, kiteboarding, windsurfing and bird-watching (something he did with Chris in order to rest between kiteboarding trips). His life was his family, his next adventure and medicine, which fascinated him.
He was 70. No one kiteboards when they’re 70. No one but people like Roger who look less at the calendar than they do at the map.
Mom was shaken when she’d called with the news. They’d done some cross-country hut-tohut ski trips in Colorado together. No way Mom thought she’d outlive Roger but then again she knew Roger. Knew that he had come close to the edge canoeing on the Koyukuk River in Alaska and cave diving in Mexico. Those were just the close calls he’d talked about because Roger wasn’t the talking type.
Mom was shaken (Roger looked in on my parents at Mammoth and made sure they were OK). It was as if she lost a son or, if not a son, a kindred spirit.
“Kindred spirit” and a restless one at that. Roger made most of us feel as if we never got out of bed in the morning. He skied more than 2 million feet, cross-country skied the Haute Route in the Alps, did multiple trans-sierra Nevada crosscountry ski trips with his wife, summitted Mount Denali as the trip medic and Cotopaxi (the world’s highest active volcano) in Ecuador, hiked much of the Sierra Nevada, trekked Nepal and Bhutan, kayaked all of the upper Kern, the Grand Canyon, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Argentina, New Zealand, hang glided in Arizona and kiteboarded with son Erik in Hawaii, northeastern Brazil and the Cook Islands.
The trips are exhausting to recount to say nothing of the planning, managing the equipment and doing them.
Roger and Chris bird-watched in Africa, South America, Europe and chased birds around Israel during their last trip in March. The only continent Roger didn’t travel to was Antarctica. He and Chris had a trip planned there this December and Chris is going in his honor.
Getting your hair mussed (Roger had this magnificent crown of white hair seemingly from birth) was unavoidable. Roger had two total hip replacements, one total knee arthroplasty, osteochondritis dissecans bone graft in the other knee, multiple back surgeries and a cervical fusion.
This was aside from the chalkboard full of aches and pains he didn’t talk about in his soft-spoken, relaxed manner.
“He wanted to live to the fullest and not stop until his body was orthopedically incapable,” his son, Erik, said. “His bionic body was a testament to this philosophy.”
Living “to the fullest” wasn’t all about trophy hunting and knocking down peak after peak.
“Dad had a deep respect for nature, and its conservation,” Erik said.
Roger lived fully. To the last day. With or without fear, but with no apologies.
He will be remembered for his PB&J sandwiches, his excessive use of duct tape to fix everything, his love of Chris and his family and the great mane of white hair.