Martin Litton Dies @ 97; Colorado Dam-Fighter & Wilderness Advocate Rowed Grand Canyon At Age 87

As a boy growing up in the 1920s, when California's population was less than 5 million, Martin Litton would hike cross-country from his Inglewood home to the beach. Sometimes he accompanied his veterinarian father on his rounds to the ranch that later became Los Angeles International Airport.

Litton spent summers camping with his family in Yosemite National Park. As a teen, he and a friend rented a burro, for 75 cents a day, and climbed Mt. Whitney. On that 12-day trip into the wilderness, they never saw another person. "That was the thing that changed my life," Litton would recall decades later. Litton, 97, a legendary Colorado River guide and fierce wilderness advocate involved in some of the 20th century's biggest conservation battles, died Sunday of age-related causes at his home in Portola Valley, Calif.

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A pilot, oarsman, writer and photographer, Litton was above all a passionate defender of the wild. He was an environmental purist who disdained compromise, a master of what a contemporary called "articulate outrage." He played a pivotal role in keeping dams out of his beloved Grand Canyon and a ski resort out of the southern Sierra's majestic Mineral King Valley. He was a leading force in the establishment of Redwood National Park and fought a bitter, losing fight against the construction of a nuclear power plant in Diablo Canyon on the California coast.

The preeminent conservationist David Brower called Litton his conscience. "When I would waver in various conservation battles, he would put a little starch in my backbone by reminding me that we should not be trying to dicker and maneuver," Brower said. "I guess I got some of my extremism from Martin Litton, and I'm grateful for it."

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http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-martin-litton-20141202-story.html