Passed away December 15th, 2023.
Richard (Dick) Lee Randolph died of natural causes after a short period of home hospice with family.
Dick was an avid outdoorsman all his life and rowed his own raft down the Grand Canyon at 79 and camped throughout the West into his early 90s. For many years he would take his kids on 5- to 15-day packtrips, in the mountains of Wyoming and Colorado, with horses carrying the load while the rest hiked along.
With Margaret (Peg) Quinlan, Dick had seven children (Rona, Gretchen, John, Lesley, Moira, Dan, Ned), 11 grandkids, and currently 14 great-grandkids.
With his partner of over four decades, Carol Ryan, he traveled through much of North America by camper, canoe, raft, and foot.
In the 1950s, Dick and his business partner, Jack Leonard, ranched in Strawberry Park, outside of Steamboat Springs, and then bought the Brown’s Park Ranch in NW Colorado, which they worked until it was condemned by the US Fish and Game to form the Brown’s Park National Wildlife Refuge.
Dick worked in the ski industry for many years, initially at Howelsen Hill in Steamboat Springs. He was part of the construction management for the first tramway at Jackson Hole, and managed the lifts there until 1969. He then moved back to Steamboat Springs and was part of the management at the ski area until 1977, where he oversaw the building of the first gondola and numerous chairlifts, including the development of the Priest Creek area.
Dick was an excellent athlete. At Cornell University he was the stroke of the heavyweight crew in 1946. He was a superb skier and worked as a backcountry ski guide into his late 70s. He rowed rafts on many western rivers, including dozens of trips through the Yampa Canyon, and 6 times down the Grand Canyon.
A true raconteur and lover of music, he was known to sing opera while floating down river canyons, recite poems at the drop of a hat, and regale his fellow boaters or dinner mates with winding and detailed tales of his adventures.