Anchorage Daily News

Even the toughest can do battle for only so long.

And so it is that at age 81, Anchorage's Dick Griffith says he has done his last Alaska Mountain Wilderness Classic.

Heir to the legacy of mountain men who blazed their way into the wilds of the American West, "Old Black Ass," as some of his friends know him, is an Alaska legend. Over the years, he's gotten himself into more than his share of trouble in America's last great wilderness, but he has always managed to get himself out.

Even when he severely frostbit his rear end skiing downwind in 35-degree-below-zero cold in the Brooks Range decades ago -- thus the nickname -- he made his way back to civilization under his own power. Real men don't call for rescues.

Sometimes gruff on the outside, he's all warmth and kindness on the inside. Many whose aid he has come to over the years can attest to that.

LOOKING OUT FOR OTHERS

Dave Manzer, a former winner of the Classic and now an Anchorage father of two, wonders if he'd have lived to start a family if not for Griffith.

Early in the running of the very first Classic race in 1982, Griffith put himself in position to pull Manzer's hypothermic body from the Skilak River. No doubt it would have been just as easy, actually easier, to march off toward the finish line in Homer and forget about Manzer.

Even back then, Griffith was something of a wilderness legend. The Classic was about to become likewise as a foot and paddle race so long, so discomforting and so potentially dangerous that it scared most people away. It still does.

Staged for 150 to 250 miles across different stretches of untracked Alaska wilderness, the race offers no support, no aid stations and a waiver that warns:

"No help will be available. No rescue can be anticipated ... We are warning you. Any decision you make is your own and you are responsible for it. Your injuries or death are not our problem."

Competitors from Outside are so intimidated, they seldom show. Those who do rarely return.

Not that Alaskans have an easy time of it. Over the 26-year history of the race, only about half the starters have finished. Last year, on a tough course in the Interior, only 14 were even bold enough to give the race a go. Six finished.

POSSIBLE IMPOSSIBILITY

It could have been worse.

When the first Classic was staged on a course across the Kenai Peninsula from Hope to Homer, nobody was even sure the event was possible. The Resurrection Pass and Russian River trails helped guide racers at the start, but the trails only went about a quarter of the way.

The rest was near-impenetrable alder thickets with grizzly bears, raging glacial rivers, intimidating river canyons and steep mountain ridges in the Andy Simons Wilderness Area of the Kenai National Refuge.

As it turned out, the race almost ended on the banks of the Skilak River not far from the Russian River trail. Racers bunched up there trying to figure out how to negotiate the raging glacial torrent.

Then Griffith showed up.

At age 55, he was already an "old guy" by the standards of everyone else in the race. He'd lagged behind at the start. Age cost him some foot speed, as it always does, but he retained the strength and endurance of athletes half his age. And he had a wilderness savvy the others could only envy, a savvy earned the hard way -- lots of time spent living wet, cold and hungry in the wild, contemplating ways to make the wilderness more comfortable next time.

Griffith found Classic race leaders on the banks of the Skilak staring at turbid 33-degree glacial water that would normally be called "whitewater,'' only this gray, dirty water was loaded with glacial silt.

Years afterward, Roman Dial, who would go on to become a legendary Alaska adventurer in his own right, recalled one of Griffith's first comments to the small group of young men (the first woman had yet to enter the race) wondering what to do.

"You young guys eat too much and don't know nothin'," Griffith said.

IF YOU CAN'T CROSS, FLOAT

Griffith knew things. He'd already done epic adventures on the Colorado River, in the canyons of Mexico and in several of the mountain ranges of his beloved Alaska, where he'd made one of the first crossings of the Brooks Range in the 1950s. Going into the first Classic, he'd known the Skilak would present a major obstacle, and he had a solution.

"The first thing he did was pull out this Viking-style stocking cap with horns on it," Manzer said. "He put it on, and he looked like a Viking warrior with those horns on. What a character.

"Then he pulled out this little vinyl raft. It looked like a toy to me. I thought it was a joke. He proceeded to blow that thing up."

When Griffith finally unpacked some small, take-apart oars, Manzer realized the raft was no joke.

The oldest guy in the race had the newest trick.

Griffith's crossing wasn't pretty. The raft got spun around a few times in the current and took some splash, Manzer recalled. But it worked.

"He got it done," Manzer said. "He got across there."

And then, in what would become classic Griffith fashion, he stayed to make sure everyone else got across safely too.

Manzer almost didn't. He watched Dial wade into the current, get swept off his feet and swim to the far shore. Other racers got nervous. They asked Manzer if he'd take a length of parachute cord across with him so they could at least pull their backpacks across before making the dangerous swim.

Against his better judgment, Manzer decided to do as they asked and tied the cord to his waist. Halfway out in the river, already having a hard time maintaining his footing, Manzer found the thin parachute cord being pulled hard by the ripping current.

Suddenly battling dangerous drag on the line, he yelled at the men on the other end to let go.

They did, but it didn't help.

The line swept downstream; then began to wrap around Manzer's legs. Swept off his feet, tumbling in the current, weighted down by his backpack, he tried to swim, but it was almost hopeless with his legs entangled.

Eventually, he said, he all but gave up. One of the last things he remembered was seeing Griffith running madly down the bank of the Skilak trying to get in position to pull him out of the current. Then he felt the line around his legs loosen a bit. He gave a few kicks for shore and hit the beach.

Griffith was there to pull him out of the river and up a steep cutbank.

"I don't know that I would have been able to do it myself,'' Manzer said. "He probably saved my life.''

WINNING'S NO PRIORITY

Over the years, around campfires and in conversations here and there, Manzer would get to know Griffith better and discover that what happened on the Skilak was perfectly in character. It might even help explain why Griffith, who started more Classics than anyone (22 of the 26), never won a single race, though he probably could have.

Jim Jager and Laura McDonough, on the way to becoming the first woman to win the race when the course moved back to Hope to Homer for three years in the late 1990s, remember catching up with him in the middle of nowhere when they thought they were comfortably ahead.

Griffith would later fall behind after taking a rest break, not so much because he had to but because he wanted to. For Griffith, the Classic was always more about the adventure than the race. To win the race involved serious sleep deprivation, and Griffith always preferred being able to experience and enjoy the country.

Three-time Classic winner Brant McGee understands. He finally quit racing because he couldn't deal with the sleep deprivation, he said, and having won several times, he couldn't comprehend the idea of putting himself through the inevitable punishment without trying his best to win.

It was never like that for Griffith. For him, the daily toil always seemed to be part of the joy. Maybe it was part of a work ethic instilled growing up on a homestead ranch in Wyoming.

TURNAROUND COMPETITOR

When Griffith did the Crow Pass Crossing, a race Anchorage marathoners consider arduous, he'd jog and hike from Girdwood to Eagle River carrying a pack raft, float a stretch of the river downstream to within several miles of the Eagle River Nature Center, put the raft back in the pack, hike to the finish line, and then turn around and hike back over the pass to the start near Girdwood.

"He's a legend,'' said McGee, who like so many others remembers his first meeting with Griffith well. It was just prior to the start of the Classic race on the Nabesna-to-McCarthy course through the Wrangell Mountains in the 1980s. McGee, an endurance ski racer, showed up in ski tights.

"I was in Spandex," McGee said. "Dick took one look at me and said, 'You're going to die.' "

McGee survived, later went on to Classic victories, and Griffith changed his views on tights as he changed his views on many things over the years. One of the greatest strengths of those who achieve at any activity is adaptability, and Griffith has always been adaptable.

He has never stopped learning, and he has never stopped teaching.

"Every time I go out with him, I learn something new,'' said Jerry Dixon of Seward, who has become something of Griffith's sidekick of late. A former smoke jumper who is one of a small group of people to have survived a double parachute failure, Dixon was with Griffith on his last Classic in June on the last leg of a brutal 180-to-200-mile course from Chicken to Central across the Tanana-Yukon uplands.

Butch Allen, Jim McDonough, Tyler Johnson and Craig Banyard, who inexplicably ran into each other in Circle Hot Springs four days into the race, stumbled into Central together to claim victory.

There's no prize, just the honor of winning.

The route will move again to a new course next year, something that happens every three years to ensure no one develops a route advantage. There is talk about trying to put the finish line at Griffith's home near the edge of Chugach State Park above Anchorage.

Griffith said he'd welcome being part of the race in that way.

A FEW CONCESSIONS

As the two oldest competitors in the race this year, Griffith and Dixon, who will turn 60 next year, did get special dispensation from race rules to make their journey easier. They were allowed to float the Fortymile River from Chicken into Canada to connect with the Yukon for a float down to Circle, and they were allowed to use the Steese Highway to get from there to Central.

Dixon called the trip "glorious."

"We had a magic journey," he said.

"They let me cheat,'' Griffith said. "That's the only way I could do it. It was long hours (14 per day, Dixon said), but it was easy.

"I can hardly walk right now. I've got to get a knee replacement, and even when I get it replaced, I'll be 82.

"It's getting a little tough.''

Not that Dick Griffith is thinking retiring from outdoors adventures. He's got a float through the Grand Canyon planned for this winter, and after that, knee surgery. If the knee surgery turns out as successful as the shoulder surgery three years ago, some wonder whether Griffith might not be back for yet one more go at the Classic.

After all, he has never been a guy to whom age much mattered.

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Outdoors editor Craig Medred can be reached at cmedred@adn.com or 257-4588.

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Alaska Wilderness Classic

What: A backcountry race that started in 1982 and has crossed various mountain ranges and untracked wilderness throughout Alaska. Routes typically range from 150 miles to 250 miles and change every three years.

Rules: Pretty simple. Racers go from start to finish under their own power without any outside support, carrying all food and equipment.

Rescues: Racers are expected get out of any trouble they encounter. However, since 2004, racers have been required to carry satellite phones to facilitate emergency rescues.

Transportation: Typically by foot and packraft, although bicycles, skis, and even paragliders have been used by intrepid racers.

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