Just this last year [Stewart Udall] rafted down the Colorado River from Lees Ferry — named for Udall’s grandfather — and, with a grandson, trekked from the floor of the Grand Canyon up Bright Angel Trail some 7,000 feet to the South Rim. His family had cautioned against it, and he rejected a Park Service offer of a mule. “They wouldn’t have liked it if I hadn’t made it,” he recounted, “but what a way to go.” Once at the South Rim, Udall marched straight to the bar at the Tovar Lodge and ordered a martini.
Udall was 84 when the above took place. Stewart Udall was Secretary of the Interior under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. He is the father of New Mexico’s junior U.S. senator Tom Udall.
From a 2005 Los Angeles Times profile of Udall.