The clear, blue sky, snowy slope and even Bob Griswold's bright-yellow jacket appear dull, washed out. Plucky surf music, reminiscent of the Beach Boys, accompanies the film like a music video, but before there was such a thing. It all screams 1970s or maybe late 1960s, except one thing: the skiing, which was ahead of its time.
Griswold hops down the mountain on two planks, sinking waist deep into the powder at the apex of his turns, icy snow crusting his thick moustache as he explodes out of the white wave. He lifts into the air, landing on the edge of his inside ski on the verge of losing control. He plants another turn, a cotton cloud enveloping him once more.
Griswold passes the camera, and the shot switches to an empty sky underlined by the sliver of a distant mountain range. Griswold and four other skiers—of the original K2 Demonstration Team known as The Performers—fly overhead, flipping, spinning and splitting their legs.
It's 1971 and "freestyle" skiing is born. It's a style of cliff jumping, pushing-the-limit skiing that has been repeated in countless videos ever since, though the music has changed.
However, before Griswold and his partners piled into a red, white and blue motor home to start a winter tour hitting three dozen resorts, he had moved to Sun Valley like the other performers. He made Sun Valley his home, raising his family here and working as a ski instructor for two decades.
Even though Griswold hasn't lived in the valley since 2005—moving back to his childhood town of Tacoma, Wash.—Sun Valley took note when he died Aug. 12 at age 64.
That's because to many longtime locals, Bob Griswold wasn't just one of the idolized performers, but Grizy. They always refer to him as Grizy.
To friend Kathy Wygle, he was originally Grizy the charismatic bartender whom she worked with at the Orehouse bar in Sun Valley in the 1970s.
"We worked out this routine where we'd throw bottles over a beam above the bar," Wygle said. "He was an entertainer."
So was the beginning of their friendship. However, Ciro restaurant Manager Danny Beritich knew him since before grade school.
"His parents lived at one end of the block and my parents lived on the other end," Beritich said.
Beritich also bartended with Grizy.
"Gentle guy. Gentle soul," remarked Beritich, a sentiment shared by Wygle.
"He was a soft-spoken, thoughtful person—incredible athlete," Wygle said. "He looked little and wiry, but he could do anything, like a gymnast."
Beritich remembers a wintertime tennis tournament the two played in, Grizy with a cast on his ankle, which he had broken skiing.
"We made it to the finals," Beritich said. "And lost. But still."
Unlike most who knew the man, 21-year-old Katrin Griswold never knew him as 'Grizy.' When she tells of his free, wild spirit proven by biking from Alaska to Southern California, or climbing up Mount McKinley with skis on his back just to ski down, it's almost always followed by "from what I've heard."
"I knew him as Dad," Katrin said, "but they knew him as Grizy, this crazy guy."
But Katrin's father gave her a keyhole view into his Grizy side when, in 1999, he left her "Dad's collection of K2 material," accompanied by a handwritten note.
"If, as an adult later in life, this may give you a chuckle or perhaps some insight, that will make me happy. Wherever I am," he wrote.
Trevon Milliard: tmilliard@mtexpress.com
Photo courtesy of Katrin Griswold
Bob Griswold soaks in the sun on Bald Mountain.
