Dick Griffith finishing the 250-mile Mentasta to McKinley route in the 1987 Alaska Mountain and Wilderness Classic. Photo by Roman Dial.
Dick Griffith, the grandfather of modern Alaska adventure, died in his sleep this week. He was 98.
In his 50s, a thick shock of white hair crowned Dick’s head. Many of us in our 20s hoped one day to be like him: Clint Eastwood in tennis shoes and a backpack.
But by the time our own heads had grayed, we knew we could never be what he was: the person we meet once in a lifetime, and even then, only if we’re lucky.
I met Dick in 1982, the night before the inaugural Alaska Mountain and Wilderness Classic, then a week-long, carry-all-your-own-food-and-gear, no-roads-or-outside-help race across the Kenai Peninsula.
He was 55 and had made dozens of wild journeys for personal reflection, not fame, fortune or being first.
That night around the campfire, Dick didn’t mention any of his accomplishments, leaving me to wonder, “What is this old guy doing here at the start of a 150-mile race across the wilderness?”
Soon enough, he’d show us a path that would change our lives, a path he’d been blazing for decades.
Dick Griffith on the Grand Canyon in the early 1950’s. Photo courtesy of the Griffith Family.
In 1949, at 22 years old, Dick met his future wife, Isabelle, while retracing John Wesley Powell’s 1,200 mile trip from Green River, Wyoming, to the end of the Grand Canyon. She offered to help finance the trip if she could go along.
They didn’t complete the trip that year. But they did fall in love. They married a year later and returned to Green River in 1951. Together, they made the first complete inflatable rubber raft trip down the Grand Canyon.
The following year he and Isabelle took a small Air Force survival raft through the sprawling depths of Mexico’s Copper Canyon, making the first descent of the Rio Urique.
When asked where he found that little raft, he replied, “They were everywhere after the war. You could buy ’em for a dollar.”
In 1954, Dick and Isabelle moved to Alaska, where their two children, Barney and Kimmer, were born. Five years later he flew north to the Arctic Ocean to walk 500 miles from Kaktovik to Anaktuvuk Pass, across the North Slope and through the Brooks Range, living off the land as he went.
Dick liked to recount that 50-day epic in his spare understated way. “I left Barter Island with three dogs and a partner. The partner went lame the first week and flew out. One of the dogs died. I ate the second one. And the third one got smart and ran off.”
Despite hunger and hardships with mosquitoes and river crossings, Dick made it to Anaktuvuk, where he struck up enduring friendships with the Nunamiut people he met there. They were only then settling down from their nomadic lifestyles.
Dick’s Anchorage home has long been decorated with the masks his Anaktuvuk friends carved, a symbol of how Dick’s life straddled pre-statehood and the modern era.
While his kids grew and he worked as an engineer, Dick stuck closer to home through the 1960s and 70s. He returned to Anaktuvuk at age 50 to complete his Brooks Range traverse from Kaktovik to Kotzebue with his good friend Bruce Stafford in 1977. His is the first complete documented traverse of that Arctic mountain range.
Dick along the northern coast of Canada in 1995. Photo by Rodger SIglin, courtesy of Griffith family.
Two years later he suffered a horrible injury when he froze his legs and buttocks during a blizzard on a solo Arctic ski trip. He spent a month in the frostbite unit in Anchorage where, he recounted humbly, “They amputated my butt.”
But that didn’t stop him from heading back to the Arctic to ski big distances alone.
At 61, he began a 4,000-mile trip from Unalakleet to Hudson Bay, across northern Alaska and through the Northwest Passage. Nearly every March or April for a decade he’d head north for a month or two of solo skiing.
Once, a polar bear followed him for days. Eventually the bear screwed up its courage enough to slice the tent wall with a claw while Dick slept.
Lacking a gun, Dick realized he had to take creative action. He wrapped dozens of Tylenol and Advil in smoked salmon and left it on the snow. He never saw the bear again.
At age 73, after eight annual trips, he reached Hudson Bay.
My own age provides renewed, informed respect for the trips he made at my age and beyond. Last year I told him so.
“How old are you?” he asked. “Sixty-four? You’re only 64? Well, you’re in the prime of your life!”
When Dick was 64, he skied 450 miles from Point Barrow to Barter Island alone, dragging everything he needed in his sled for the month-long journey.
We all watched Dick grow older and continue at post-retirement age to do what we young ‘uns would never do. “Life is like a bicycle,” he told us. “If you stop moving, you fall over.”
The start of the 1995 Donnelly to McKinley Park Alaska Mountain and Wilderness Classic. Dick is holding his 11-year-old Sherpa Raft. It’s the only race in 43 years that everyone finished; “This route is too easy!” Dick said.
Throughout his 50s, 60s and 70s, he continued to complete the annual Wilderness Classic races all across Alaska and row rafts down the Grand Canyon. He did his last Classic at 81. He rowed his last Grand Canyon trip at 89.
Dick’s wit was as legendary as his adventures.
In that early Hope to Homer race, Dick unrolled an inflatable vinyl raft at the first of three rivers the rest of us rightfully feared having to swim in our rain gear and backpacks.
As his intent dawned on us, he put on a furry Viking hat with soft horns and chided us. “You young guys may be fast, but you eat too much and don’t know nothin’!”
For good measure he added that “old age and treachery beats youth and skill every time.”
He then inflated what would eventually be called a “packraft,” rowed across the churning glacial river, and waited to make sure we all crossed safely.
Dick wasn’t just helpful in the wilderness. Raised on a Wyoming dirt farm during the Depression, he once wrote, “I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth but I certainly intend to die with one.”
Dick and a Tarahumara Indian at the bottom of Mexico’s Copper Canyon in 1952. Photo courtesy of the Griffith family.
By building and maintaining his modest house in the Anchorage Hillside woods, avoiding all debt, living frugally and investing wisely, he made good on that promise and shared his success with the community. Especially the Eagle River Visitor Center—and his friends in need.
Besides his financial giving, he gave his time, helping his neighbors and hosting holiday and Sunday dinners for his “orphans,” as he called us.
Dick spent hours, days and weeks spread over decades hand-working Chugach State Park Trails, usually with other volunteers and often with Boy Scouts earning their merit badges.
Almost single-handedly, he kept the Alaska Mountain and Wilderness Classic alive for the last 43 years. He’d host the pre-race dinner at his home each year with a wonderful salad served up in a giant wooden bowl. He would drive racers to and from the race for more than 30 years.
Most importantly, he brought up the rear and corralled the stragglers, who learned more in one week with Dick than they did in all their previous years of backcountry and wilderness travel.
Dick would never have noted that his trips and generosity helped shape the Alaska outdoor sports world as we know it. Those facts make him the legend he is.
Farewell, Dick. We will miss you on your next great adventure.
Roman Dial is an Alaska adventurer who is the veteran of multiple Alaska Mountain and Wilderness Classic races and has made full-length traverses of the Brooks and Alaska ranges by foot, ski, pedal and paddle. He is a professor emeritus of mathematics and biology at Alaska Pacific University in Anchorage.
