Canyons and Ice: The Wilderness Travels of Dick Griffith

In Canyons and Ice, Kaylene Johnson recounts the adventures of Dick Griffith, who has undertaken a series of remarkable wilderness journeys across Alaska, Canada, Mexico, and the American West over the past six decades. On at least one of these trips he barely survived. Stoical, utterly self-reliant, and attracted by challenges of immense scale, Griffith brings to mind heroic figures of an earlier, less craven era -- stalwart individuals like Shackleton, Amundsen, Nansen, and Stefansson who explored some of the least hospitable places on earth without benefit of GPS, Gore-Tex, or the possibility of rescue. Unlike most of his celebrated antecedents, however, Griffith s motives for seeking a life of risk and hardship had nothing to do with a desire for wealth or prestige. As this gripping and inspiring book explains, Griffith is simply afflicted with an irresistible inclination to attempt what others say can t be done. When asked what possesses a man to repeatedly strike out alone across hundreds of miles of rugged, lonely country, he replies, Every so often, it s just time to walk.
-- Jon Krakauer, Author of Into the Wild, Into Thin Air, Under the Banner of Heaven, and Where Men Win Glory