Exclusive: Catching Up With Will Gadd - A Candid Interview

Skilled adventure sports athlete, Will Gadd, sits down with us to discuss his favorite moments in climbing, kayaking, and paragliding, along with his upcoming projects.

Niagara Falls in the Winter / Unsplash

Will Gadd is an adventure athlete who is well-accomplished in climbing, kayaking, and paragliding. Having won numerous climbing competitions over the years, setting the world distance for paragliding, climbing Niagara Falls, and completing several first ascents in kayaking, Will has made an incredible name for himself in the adventure sports community. He has continued actively participating in various outdoor pursuits and strives to share his passion for adventure.

What was it like growing up in the world of adventure sports?

Growing up, my mom and dad were climbers. I grew up with these sports, being in the mountains, and backpacking. The first sport I pushed was caving, which I initially did with my dad. It was a pretty neat experience as a kid, being in places where nobody had ever been. I was the probe that could get into places other people couldn’t. At 13 or 14 years old, I was in places that nobody had ever been and no adult could reach because they were too big. These were high-hazard environments, places with huge drops. To navigate that as a young teenager was really powerful for me. Looking back on it, I don’t think I would let my own children do that. That sense of autonomy, being able to make a contribution, and finding a lot of intense interest and meaning was a very powerful experience.

Where was your favorite place your adventures took you growing up?

We explored Cadomin Cave near Jasper, Alberta, which was where I lived. That was my favorite place and I’ve caved all over the world. I got into kayaking when I was about 15. I had a list on the wall in my house and I’d start at the top and call every kayaker in town until someone would finally break and take me kayaking. My parents weren’t paddlers so that was a sport that was completely on my own. To this day, I love rivers. There’s very few things in life I love more than bouncing down a good run. I was also skiing both in resorts and the backcountry, and obviously rock climbing. I got into rock climbing pretty seriously my junior year. I did a lot of it and then went to school in Colorado, continuing to do these sports a lot. I put a lot of time into these sports and its hard to imagine having that much time in life today. With ice climbing in high school, I couldn’t figure out a way to make ice climbing hard enough. I wanted it to be really, really hard and I couldn’t figure out a way to make it hard so I focused on competitive rock climbing in my 20’s. Then, mixed climbing came along where you could climb sections of rock between ice. That was really interesting and it took over my brain. It’s been an obsession of mine for the last 30 years.

Did you have a defining moment of, “Maybe I can do this for a career,” or was it a more gradual progression?

I didn’t, I tried to be a professional rock climber in my 20’s but I could never find a way to make it pay for itself. I had sponsors but it was early in the adventure sports world and I wasn’t comfortable with marketing myself. I just wanted to go rock climbing. People didn’t want to pay me to just go rock climbing. I was lucky that I had other jobs. I was a journalist, which was actually my first real career. They made me editor, then I ended up as publisher, then I started some other businesses within that company. When I was 29, I was relatively successful outside of the adventure sports world. I quit to become a full time ice climber and everybody said, “You’re nuts.” I learned enough in that business experience that I could make a living, and now there was media pointed at the adventure sports world. With media exposure, you could turn that into money. I figured out how to do that well enough to just scrape by, but I went from doing really well in this great business in Boulder, Colorado, to living the dirtbag climbing lifestyle, but getting to climb and paraglide. I’ve always done multiple sports, competing at high levels in ice climbing competitions, putting up new routes, traveling the world, and setting long-distance paragliding records while still paddling a lot. I’ve focused really hard on each sport during its season, but I’m doing at least two or three sports during the year.

How did paragliding become a passion of yours?

I was working as a journalist and I went to cover the U.S. National Paragliding Championships in Aspen, Colorado, and a couple of my friends were in it because there’s a big link between climbing, kayaking, and paragliding. Somehow one of them got me a tandem flight and I thought, “This is the coolest thing ever.” I’ve always wanted to be a bird. Initially, I thought I was going to use it to fly down from the mountains - that was my theory. I’d climb mountains and fly down. I rapidly discovered that flying was often a lot more interesting than climbing. As I get older, I see the links between all these sports. Paddling a kayak in big water is very similar to flying a paraglider in how your body moves, how you have to look at the atmosphere, and the way you think. Skiing powder shares a lot with whitewater kayaking, as well. It’s just endlessly interesting to me or I wouldn’t keep doing it. It’s physically interesting to me. Every time I go out the door I learn something new. It’s mentally challenging.

Which adventure sport have you found to be more intuitive and natural for you?

It wasn’t ice climbing. Caving was pretty intuitive and natural as you use your body and very limited gear. Kayaking was also intuitive. I really like the flow of kayaking and being on the river. I’ve always said that if I ever retire, I’ll just go and run easy rivers all over the world for the rest of my life. It’s such a beautiful way to see the secret places in the world, but paragliding is the same way. I’ve actually found some climbs and new places to go from my paraglider. Jeff Lowe, well-known American alpinist who passed away a few years ago, wrote a beautiful piece about how the world is a classroom. If we let it teach us, it has everything we need. I really like that idea of Jeff’s that we are here to learn.

What has been your proudest moment in the adventure world?

It’s nice to win. Just show up and do your thing that day, right then, right there. You’ve got it or you don’t. I’m not there [at competitions] to beat anybody. I’m there to learn how to do better and I think that’s been helpful. I am proud of what I’ve done in terms of competition. The fact that I’ve been able to keep interested, keep learning, and do new things. That’s what I love. I’ve been able to make a career out of that and share these sports. I’ve always tried to share, whether it's kayaking, paragliding, or climbing. I write about them and I make little videos. I do want to share them and I’ve written dozens of articles on ice climbing, paragliding, and other sports, which people find to be helpful. I enjoy it because that’s how I really learn about these sports. I didn’t know how to ice climb, honestly. I was not a very good ice climber until I had to teach it and figure out how it works. As a result, I got better at it. These sports are not necessary for the world to go around, but they are a lot of fun. I’ve made a contribution to that and some of the things I’ve done recently are to try and get people to look at risk and what to do differently.

What is your process for mitigating risk with these sports and discussing that risk with individuals?

All these sports are really hazardous. I wrote a piece a few years ago, The Grand Delusion, and collectively, we have a little bit of delusion about how risky these sports are and that’s necessary. If we all truly accepted how risky these sports are, we’d probably go play ultimate frisbee. There’s this collective delusion in all these mountain sports that driving to the climb or the river is the most dangerous part, which isn’t true. One of the reasons that I’ve survived in these sports is that I grew up with people dying all the time, even as a kid. That gave me a pretty realistic appreciation for how dangerous these sports are. When you have a good baseline to make decisions from, it helps you make better decisions. With all these sports, I’ve tried to convey a sense of realism on the hazard and the ways that people can look at them and mitigate them, or just make better decisions. To me, the real tragedy is someone who doesn’t understand the hazard they’re getting involved with and either gets killed or seriously injured, whether it’s a kid who takes fentanyl or a climber who is soloing who doesn’t get what’s going on. We’ve lost so many people now to fentanyl. It’s that risk when we do street drugs and it’s the same in climbing. People think, “It’s not going to happen to me today,” but it does. There’s an article that I reference a lot that gives a good review of how dangerous these sports are. If we have the most realistic appreciation for the risks we’re taking, we can take better risks whether we are climbers or not. Life is full of hazards.

What are some of your upcoming plans and goals?

I have a lot of them. At least 50 percent of what I try, fails. It’s probably more like 90 percent because it often fails. I try a lot and I fail a lot. I’m doing a permafrost project in Alaska next month - that will be interesting. Permafrost is a really big deal in terms of climate change. As it [permafrost] melts, it releases a tremendous amount of carbon. Globally, this is going to be a really big problem shortly. It already is in the mountains as our permafrost is melting out. For example, on a mountain in Canada, the permafrost underneath it and the hut fell down in the mountains. We’re getting a lot more rockfall because the permafrost underneath it just melted out, which is the glue for all the rocks. They’re falling down and it’s a more hazardous environment. I want to do this project in Alaska to talk about permafrost and climate change. That’s the next immediate project coming up. I’m going back to China this winter and doing a project on how outdoor recreation is changing in China because it is exploding over there. Then, I have a project in Antarctica that I’ve been trying to do for about six years now. It was ready to go right before Covid and now everything is twice as expensive and is booked out. Again, that has failed for many years in a row.

How do you convince yourself to get back out there and try again when things don’t work out?

Sucking does suck. People say, “You should be alright, just learn and be peaceful and zen,” and I’m not. I really hate sucking. Some people are driven by excellence, and I’m driven by not sucking. For me, I try to pick up the pieces and figure out why it didn’t work, what I could do differently, and not take it personally. The goal in life is to try and understand things. Ask, “Why didn’t that work and what didn’t I understand?” You try again. One good success can take care of the 50 or 100 good failures.