Red Bull Athlete Will Gadd Paraglides Across the Rockies - Climbs Peak

Red Bull athlete Will Gadd exudes adventure. He just completed a long-distance paraglide flight to Mt. Assiniboine, where he climbed solo.

Impossible Dreams: Remote paragliding and climbing in Canada! / Will Gadd

Adventure On SI caught up with Will Gadd, who just released his latest video on his epic solo climb. He accessed the climb by paragliding into Canada’s Matterhorn, Mt. Assiniboine, climbed the mountain solo, and flew his unpowered paraglider out off the peak safely to the ground.

Few outdoor athletes are as multi-talented as Red Bull athlete, Will Gadd. If you don’t know him for his crazy feats in climbing and record-setting paragliding routes, you should dig in, as he is worth listening to for sage life advice. I recently caught up with the Red Bull's Will Gadd.

Adventure On SI: When and where did you start skiing  & climbing? What do you reflect on from those early days?

Will: “I was backcountry skiing with my parents as soon as I could slide on my own two feet. We would go up various trails in the mountains near Calgary, sometimes well above the treeline, and I vividly remember the space. I also remember doing a longer tour on primitive leather boots and cable bindings and loving how much ground we could cover in a day."

Red Bull Adventure Athlete, Will Gadd, Rocks Skiing, Climbing, and Paragliding

"One of my best days came when I was speaking at a conference in Snowbird, Utah, and I snuck out for a trip by myself. I stuck to very low consequence terrain, but I felt the same freedom and joy as when I was a kid. Ice climbing came later, but the basic winter skills I learned skiing the Wapta and other ski traverses when I was a young teenager helped there too!”

Adventure on SI: What is your why for your sport (skiing, paragliding, and climbing), and what impact has it had on your life?

Will: “Skiing taught me to be comfortable in winter mountain conditions and flexible about the day’s goals. Ski the day, not our ideas about the day. Paragliding is a lot like skiing in that you have to see the terrain and how the sun hits it, what’s under the surface, and why. Thermalling is basically an extreme version of understanding spatial variability in the snowpack, and I’ve had some neat discussions with the Canadian Avalanche Association (CAA) folks about that."

"Ice climbing is the opposite; slower, more static, considered and thoughtful, but with a taste of ultra-violence while smashing beautiful crystals. Understanding how snow works is critical for ice climbers; more ice climbers die in avalanches than while ice climbing. But I also love kayaking and spend much time chasing run-offs in Canada, Colorado, and California. I’m kind of a “phase athlete,” chasing water, clouds (water), frozen water in the form of ice and ice crystals, whatever works. I love being out in the mountains. Not sure where rock climbing fits in there, but I love that too!”

Adventure on SI: Please share some things that stand out as helping you navigate roadblocks and challenges in life.

Will: “You’ll only be good at something that deeply interests you. Passions come and go, but interests are more enduring and build up in layers that take you higher. I have a deep and life-long interest in understanding the mountains. So follow interests obsessively and with no attempt to balance anything; the best things in life are wildly unbalanced. And when it doesn’t work, be brutally honest about why. It’s never bad luck, it’s you, figure your shit out, fix it, get up, and kick ass!”

Adventure on SI: What are you doing today that matters? Any suggestions for giving back to the community?

Will: “I’m writing a book about surviving and succeeding in high-hazard environments. I’ve been doing some really interesting work in the corporate world with risk managers. I’m hoping to meld how we in the outdoor world look at our high-hazard environments with some of the cool stuff I’ve learned in the corporate/medical/industrial/military worlds. "

"We’re all taking risks to reach cool goals, how can we do better? I think we in the outdoor world are often completely deluded about the level of risk we take (driving to the mountains is NOT the most dangerous part of the day by a long shot for example), and in the business world they often won’t take enough risk... I want to help both groups survive and succeed."

"Also, I teach. I’m an alpine guide and do events at festivals, writing about how to get into mountain sports, especially suited to relative mountain newcomers. I think it’s important to give others time in the same way my community taught a fully ADHD kid how to operate in the mountains."

"As for what others can do, be kind to people you meet, be kind to those who have accidents (this is another area our mountain world needs to do better as we can learn so much from others), and be kind to the beginners. We are all novices in a relative sense. Finally, we tend to become where we live with time, so if you want to be a mountain person, ya gotta move to the mountains or very close to them.”

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