Image Gallery

Rudolph Grohmann sharpened anything with a blade including lawn mowers

Here he files the bolster of his many custom handmade creations

Dick Person 1930-2006 : A good friend to all who had the pleasure of meeting him

Your Host: Dick Person

Background

For seventeen years, from 1972 until 1989, I have lived in tipis on the Kootenay Plains and in the foothills of Alberta and on Tagish Lake in the Yukon Territory.

Education

B.A., University of Minnesota. Majors in zoology and geology. Post graduate study (2 years), University of Missouri in Wildlife Management. Research publication on work at Point Barren, Alaska, 1953.

Professional Employment in Outdoor Fields

• Owner and Operator of Wild and Woolly Guide Service, Yukon Territory and Alberta, 1970-present.
• Programme Developer and Instructor, Skookum Jim Friendship Centre, Summer and Winter, 1983-1984.
• Programme Developer and Instructor for Winter Wilderness Courses, Yukon Vocational Centre, 1983.
• Chief guide, Stoney Indian Wilderness School, Alberta 1975.
• Field tested equipment and was a representative for several climbing, mountaineering, ski touring and backpacking equipment companies from 1960 to 1970.
• Professional Guide and Mountaineer, Western Cordillera, Summers 1960-1969.
• Professional Skier, Patrolman and Avalanche Control Officer, Mt. Shasta, Squaw Valley and Jackson Hole, Winters 1960-1969.
• Recreation and Physical Education Director, Fleur de Lac School, Lake Tahoe, 1963-1964.
• Conservation Officer, Idaho Fish and Game Department, 1956-1960.
• Park Ranger, Glacier National Park, 1954-1955.

Itinerant lecturer in the fields listed above, as well as in the dependent fields of health, nutrition and body conditioning to enhance outdoor activity.

Guiding Experience

1. Canoeing
2. Backpacking
3. Technical and Mountaineering.
4. Cross-country Skiing and Snowshoeing
5. Fishing and Hunting
6. Tipi Living and Wilderness Survival Courses

My guiding career was founded early in the skiing heritage of Swedish parents. I watched my father make my first pair of skis, received my first technical instruction from the coach of the 1958 U.S. Fis Team, Sven Wiik, attending a National Coaches Clinic under him in Gunnison, Colorado and thereafter ski toured the Tetons, Sierras, Selkirks, Canadian Rockies and Coast Ranges of the Yukon. My love of water travel had begun even earlier on family expeditions around northern Minnesota in the early 1930s and expanded rapidly after acquiring a wood/canvas Rehbein canoe at age sixteen. Discharged from the United States Army at 19, I began guiding. A visit to the West in 1946 had already seeded a lifelong commitment to mountain life and travel.

Photography

A vocation I have practiced since my youth, photography spans all the areas in which I have lived and worked and constitutes many hundreds of slides on all phases of outdoor life, scenery and seasons. They have been used as magazine cover shots to illustrate tourist booklets and adventure travel articles, and as archival records, but most often as posters for adventure equipment companies.

Lectures and Slide Presentations

Since 1967 I have given lectures and slide presentations on various aspects of wilderness life and travel to many audiences in Canada and the United States, principally to educational and outdoor groups, but also to the interested public. Presentations in the form of slide shows, lectures, weekend and week-long field trips have been given for such diverse groups as city recreation departments, university classes, Arctic research organizations, community colleges, museums, private schools, environmental groups, sports associations and diverse special interest groups.