This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 1998, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

ST. GEORGE -- Bob Blair's first involvement with the Grand Canyon was as a rewrite man for The Salt Lake Tribune's Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of a mid-air commercial airliner collision over the sprawling national park in 1956.

Four decades later, the former Tribune editorial writer can be found leading 21-mile hiking tours through the cavernous canyon from the south rim to the north rim.

In fact, he conducts hikes all through southern Utah. That is, when he's not backpacking through the mountains of Nepal, Morocco, Italy, Switzerland, France, New Zealand, Peru, Spain or the Canadian Rockies. Before the next year is out, he hopes to reach a long-awaited destination is the Carpathian Mountains in the Czech Republic.

``Twelve years, twice a week,'' boasts the 76-year-old Blair about his regional hiking schedule. ``Have to fit it around my work schedule that pays for the whole damned thing.

The ``work schedule'' involves shifts at the Blarney Pub, St. George's ``only watering hole,'' as he describes it. ``I'm paid $12 a shift for scrubbing the urinals. I've done a lot of dirty work to pay for my hiking hobby.'' Blair is fond of a recent Christmas greeting card in which he is pictured at work with his mop and bucket beside the urinals. The caption: ``Just shows what happens to old retired scribes.''

Blair did not retire to Washington County to play golf and gamble at nearby Mesquite, Nev. His wife, Alice, a retired school teacher, had a nagging arthritis problem that doctors said could be alleviated somewhat by her moving to a dry climate. ``Daily hiking was not my goal, but it was in the back of my mind,'' says Blair.

Stacks of albums stuffed with hiking photos on the floor of his family room -- ``lover boy here has 18 pictures of himself on his bedroom wall,'' chides Alice -- attest to the world that has opened to Blair since his retirement in 1985 from a 40-year journalism career. A copy of John Cleare's Trekking the Great Walks of the World is on a footstool. The beginning was innocent enough. Two weeks after the Blairs had settled into their condo, Bart Anderson came into their lives. The longtime local hiking ``guru'' introduced Bob to the countryside. ``He knew it like the back of his hand. Now I do,'' says Blair.

Setting out into the red hills of Washington County came naturally. As a child near Staunton, Va., he made forays into the Blue Ridge Mountains. In college at the University of Montana, where he says he was a ``straight-C student,'' there were less challenging trails. But during his years in Salt Lake City, he made trips with the University of Utah extension division, including hikes to King's Peak in the Uintah Basin.

But his heart is in southern Utah. It's difficult, he says, to adequately describe the allure of Snow Canyon northwest of St. George, or the myriad trials in Zion National Park. ``I've seen a number of people from the East Coast make the hike to the red rocks of Snow Canyon and they're shooting pictures like crazy -- sometimes two or three rolls of one scene. I have to tell them they've hardly seen anything yet.'' And Zion? ``I've been there 150 times and rarely see the same trail twice.''

Crawford's Wash is a little-known canyon just out of the tunnels in Zion. Blair takes clients up a wash and over a huge sandstone outcropping and ``if you make a wrong step, you're gone,'' he says. Then, it's down the other side to slick red rocks and beyond that is Perenuna Weep. ``I've seen only one other person in all the trips I've taken in there.''

Not many hikers can claim some of his foreign treks. The Milford Track, a three-day hike into the New Zealand Alps; the week-long Cordilleras Blanea Trek, high in Peru's Andes; the week-long Tour de Mont Blanc in the Central Alps, and the Pyrenees High Route between France and Spain are among them.

One journey that was supposed to have included a lifelong friend remains a cherished memory.

``Bob Ottum was a Tribune colleague who left to become an award-winning writer with Sports Illustrated. His dream was to join me for a hike high in Switzerland's Alps. But he had bout with cancer and couldn't make it,'' Blair said.

When Ottum, who returned as a columnist for The Tribune in the late 1980s, died of cancer, his wife, Joyce, made a request of Blair -- to take something of Bob's and leave it in the Alps. So he took Ottum's wallet with his driver's license and on a trail high in the Alps reserved for such memories, he hurled the wallet into a canyon. ``Part of Bob made it into the Alps,'' says Blair.

Most of the time now, Blair stays close to home. There might be a major adventure to Fish Lake with Alice and some of his 13 kids and 10 grandchildren. ``Bob is one guy who can entertain the grandkids for hours and hours on a hike while I read a book,'' says Alice.

Blair speaks softly, kind of out of earshot of his wife when he talks of treks to Poland and the Czech Republic. Seeing that Alice is shifting attention his way at the slightest hint of another European adventure, he discreetly says, ``I give tours for people at $15 to $20 per hour. It's free for my friends.'' To which Alice replies jokingly, ``Freebies mean pushing that mop more often at Blarney's.''

Robert L. Lawson Bob Blair traverses ``The Wave'' formation, a scenic wonder between Kanab and Page, Ariz., that he equates with any of his many hiking experiences.