Will Gadd has spent his thirty-year career mastering the balance between risk management and innovation in extreme sports. He has set two paragliding distance records, won numerous ice climbing competitions, and achieved multiple first ascents. In 2015, Will became the first person to ice climb Niagara Falls.
Will Gadd has spent his thirty-year career mastering the balance between risk management and innovation in extreme sports. He has set two paragliding distance records, won numerous ice climbing competitions, and achieved multiple first ascents. In 2015, Will became the first person to ice climb Niagara Falls.
Connect with Will:
If you enjoyed this episode:
Thank you to our sponsor:
Will Gadd:
That's what I've done my whole life is figure out how to do things, whether it's rock climbing, paragliding, any of these sports, it's like how do you do them and how do they work? And so if I have problems, I like that. It's like how do you climb Niagara Falls, well what do you need to do? Or first descents in a kayak. It's like what's going to happen in there? It's just these are problems and this is what I love with life is figuring them out. It's just interesting.
Shelby Stanger:
Canadian climber and Paraglider Will Gadd has spent his thirty-year career figuring out how to manage risk while still innovating in his sports. He's an accomplished Red Bull athlete who has set two paragliding distance records, won countless ice climbing competitions and climbed multiple first ascents. In 2015 Will even became the first person to ice climb Niagara Falls. Yes, thee Niagara Falls. We'll hear more about that later in the episode.
I'm Shelby Stanger and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-op Studios production brought to you by Capital One. Will grew up with adventure in his blood. His parents were early climbers in the 1960s and 70s and from a young age, Will was out caving, kayaking, and climbing up rocks. Since then, Will has continued to forge a life as an adventure athlete. He finds new outdoor challenges to try all year round. In the winter he's scaling ice walls and trekking in the snowy backcountry. In the summer he's paragliding, biking and kayaking down rapids. When I spoke with Will, he was in his garage surrounded by gear - axes, ropes, helmets. I couldn't even name half the equipment hanging on his wall. It was clear that this is a man who lives for adventure.
Will Gadd, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living. I'm so excited to talk to you. What is behind you? You've got crazy instruments that I have never seen. This is a podcast, so describe it to people who can't see it.
Will Gadd:
Sure, yeah. I've got a whole lot of ice tools hanging on the wall. That's what I do. Starting about now is go to winter sports mode and that means a lot of ice climbing, but I've also got a lot of rock climbing gear there and various just basically climbing gear forever. And then if you were to walk around by garage, you'd also find everything from mountain bikes to paragliders to kayaks to skis, snow shoes. You name it, I've probably got it in this garage. I think I could go anywhere with what's in here.
Shelby Stanger:
It looks amazing, but I am terrified looking at the pointiness of some of these objects hanging on your rack. This is amazing. Okay, where are you by the way?
Will Gadd:
I am in Canmore, Alberta, which is in the Canadian Rocky Mountain, sort of straight north from Idaho, a few hundred miles and lots of glaciers, lots of ice, lots of rivers, lots of rocks. It's a great place to be an adventure mountain sports guy.
Shelby Stanger:
Okay, and you are one of these lucky kids that grew up adventurous. I was reading a little bit about you. Tell me about some of the things you did as a kid that sort of led to this incredibly high level of adventure that you do today.
Will Gadd:
Yeah, I was either lucky or unlucky depending on how you looked at it. I called my family hiking expeditions on the weekends, the forced marches, but I did love getting out in the mountains and so I was lucky enough to do that. I think getting those basic skills, keeping yourself warm, dry, fed, hydrated, and just in the game, learning those at a really young age helped me as I got older. And then in high school I didn't actually do all that much outdoor stuff. I still went climbing and stuff in early high school, but I got way into basketball, volleyball, BMX bikes, team sports and did a lot of that. And always doing some, always going skiing and stuff. I lived in a mountain town in Canada growing up as well, so I grew up doing sports of all varieties. That's what I really liked to do. And mountain sports were just part of that. Maybe other kids went to the hockey game, I went backcountry skiing. It was just normal.
Shelby Stanger:
So your parents took you backcountry skiing and camping as a young kid?
Will Gadd:
Very young. I mean, my mom joked that she only stopped climbing when she was pregnant with me when she could no longer see her feet. So I've been at this a long time one way or the other. But I really loved the outdoor sports and skiing, climbing, whatever. I would always do that. And then I got more seriously into them on my own and I actually got most seriously into kayaking. That was my first sport where I was, my parents didn't kayak, but we were living in Jasper, Alberta, which is a great kayaking town. I knew how to climb to some extent and I'd done a lot of caving. That was my dad's main game by that point. So pushing into new passages, I was sort of the designated probe and when the adults couldn't get through a small section, they'd send me in. So I'm like 12 years old and I'm in an area where literally nobody can get to me, they can't get to me. And I'm exploring this cave system by myself.
There's huge drops and pits and hazards, falling rocks, stuff like this. And for whatever reason I really thrived in that environment. I thought it was awesome. I was like, I'd be by myself and I do it by own thing and just managing those hazards and respecting them and so on was a pretty solid background too. And I look back on that. I'm like, would I let my kids do that? I've got two kids actually I would, they're pretty switched on kids. I think they would also be fine and especially adolescents probably need stuff like this that's intense and cool. I certainly did.
Shelby Stanger:
I've been to a couple caves and it is like one of the most fascinating activities you could do in the world and the scariest and the most wild. But you would do the most wild things today. So first you got into kayaking. Quickly tell me about that?
Will Gadd:
The kayaking thing was great. There was a good kayaking club there and I saw people on the river and I walked into one of their pool sessions one day and I was like, "Can you teach me how to roll one of these things?" And they said yes. And that's what I did super obsessively for, I'm still an avid kayaker. If I had my choice of activities, I needed to live somewhere in the Southeastern US one day so I could just paddle more. But I got way into it and I would trade shuttles. These old, I was like 14 and these guys would give me their trucks and say, "Okay, meet us down here." And I'd drive a truck down-
Shelby Stanger:
But you're 14?
Will Gadd:
Yeah, 14.
Shelby Stanger:
You can't drive, you don't have your license.
Will Gadd:
Yeah, it was awesome. I was so stoked and I'd meet them at the takeout and then they'd teach me how to kayak around the eddy for a bit. Eventually I was running the rivers with them.
Shelby Stanger:
During his early adventures Will took on a lot of responsibility. He loved having a role that required concentration, effort, and expertise. Pursuing these activities wasn't just about acquiring physical skills, it was also a lesson in being a team leader and learning about risk. As Will grew into his late teens and early twenties, he doubled down on outdoor sports. He was interested in becoming a professional athlete, but quickly realized that winning climbing competitions wasn't going to pay the bills. Will started working in publishing. It was during this time that he discovered paragliding, which captured his imagination.
So quickly, just tell me about paragliding because you're not just a hobbyist. How'd you get into it? What's it feel like?
Will Gadd:
Yeah, I got into paragliding because I was working as a journalist and I covered the US Paragliding Nationals in Aspen, Colorado. A friend of mine was competing and he's like, "You should come up and check this out." And they were launching off the hillside, flying out and then catching thermals, rising columns of air just like birds and riding them up to the clouds, which is where thermals tend to kind of end is that cloud base. And I was like, this is the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life. You can be a bird, you can do this? No way. I put most of the next few years into paragliding a lot and it is just fascinating to understand how to navigate this boiling atmosphere. If you could see it on any given day, parts of the atmosphere are going up, parts of them are going down and how does it all work?
It's just a very complex and interesting problem and I loved it. Plus it's fun. It's, paragliding is really the most intellectually challenging sport I've ever done. Initially I was very scientific about it. It's like if I just break down all the science, then I'll understand it. And I've moved away from that maybe because I've done a lot of paragliding, but I've moved much more, it's much intuitive for me now. But just it's still like I get to cloud-base, I'm up there with a cloud just like you're coming into land in a jet somewhere and you're going through the clouds. I'm like, I'm hanging out in space on this paraglider and flying. Then I'm like, where am I going to go and where's the next thermal going to be? And trying to figure out the angle of the sun and what the ground looks like and where the clouds are popping and where they're not. It's just fascinating and very interesting and very high hazard too. So it matters.
Shelby Stanger:
Will discovered a deep love for paragliding and he wanted to spend as much time flying as possible. He decided to quit his job and give professional outdoor sports another go. This time Will applied his experience in publishing to gain sponsorships and media coverage. That financial support allowed him to train and compete full time. During his first couple of years as a pro athlete Will won both the US and the Canadian Paragliding National Championships. He also became the first person to paraglide across the entire United States in the winter, Will was out ice climbing. He won every major title in the sport from the World Cup to the Winter X Games. If you don't know exactly what ice climbing is, I'll let Will explain.
Will Gadd:
So ice climbing is obviously climbing ice and you've got these kind of medieval weapons on your feet that you can kick in and you've got these spiky bits on ice tools in your hands that you can slam into the ice and up you go. It's relatively uncomplicated to do. I'm also a guide. I can teach anybody who can walk up a set of stairs to ice climb in an hour or two and have a lot of fun with them. On the other hand, you can take it to its illogical limits and climb like the rock between the icicles up an overhanging wall that's like a thousand feet high. And this is what I'm currently really into is very technically demanding ice and mixed climbing in wild places all over the world. That's kind of what fires me up.
Shelby Stanger:
When he's mixed climbing, Will moves up bare rock punctuated with frozen features and icicles. The wall is often too cold to put his fingers on, so he uses ice climbing tools. Imagine using the tiny serrated edge of an axe to hang from a hold instead of your fingers. Will has encountered all different kinds of ice, but he continues to chase one specific type known as spray ice.
Will Gadd:
I started climbing this stuff called spray ice, where the mist sprays on a surface that's below freezing and makes ice and it's called spray ice. It's kind of frozen clouds. So I started climbing that in Iceland in like 1998, but I've been chasing it all over the world ever since then. It's really interesting stuff.
Shelby Stanger:
Tell me what that looks like. Frozen clouds. Is it just a rock with a layer of water on top?
Will Gadd:
Imagine that the foam that you see along the beach after waves break freezes. It's got a lot of air in it and a lot of water in it, but it's not structurally as sound as normal frozen ice is.
Shelby Stanger:
Will started seeking out routes specifically for the opportunity to climb spray ice. In Canada, there's a famous spot called Helmcken Falls. At 463 feet, it's the fourth-highest waterfall in Canada. It's really stunning. Water plunges over a ledge into a huge natural amphitheater. There's about 300 feet between the wall and the water, which gives the falls an unreal suspended quality. In 2010, Will and his friend Tim Emmett became the first climbers to scale Helmcken. They named the ascent Spray On as a nod to the amount of spray ice they encountered. When we come back, Will talks about ice climbing up Niagara Falls, what it's like to establish new routes, and he shares his approach to risk management.
Will Gadd is an expert climber, paraglider, speaker, writer and Red Bull athlete. After winning countless titles and competitions in the late 90s and early 2000s, Will started to tackle ice climbing ascent off the beaten track. In 2010, he took on Helmcken Falls in Canada. That climb sparked a new wild idea. He wanted to climb Niagara Falls.
So in 2015, this is almost 10 years ago, you climbed Niagara Falls, which most of us know what Niagara Falls looks like. I don't know if I've ever seen anybody climb it. Are you the only one?
Will Gadd:
Yeah, some people have top roped a few portions of it and messed around, but I'm definitely the only person to climb the rig. I'm trying hard to get the gorge opened up for more ice climbing, but right now it's still very illegal and they take that quite seriously there. You do not want to mess with the New York State police there. They're hard. But yeah, Niagara Falls was a really great project that included a lot of different people from all over the place.
Shelby Stanger:
Well, what was it like? Could you take us through it? Just I think because all of us can maybe relate to seeing what that looks like, maybe you could take us through what it was like to climb something like that. From the quick and dirty of the planning, which was probably insane to actually doing it and what you're seeing.
Will Gadd:
Yeah, the planning was crazy. I called up the park superintendent and I was like, "Hey sir, I'd like to climb your waterfall." And it was a definite, "No." I've worked in sales, so I gave him a week to settle down and called back and he's like, "No. And if I see you here, you're going to get arrested." Because Niagara Falls is under scrutiny. There's a lot of stuff going on there that is not honeymoons and happiness. They have to deal with a lot of stuff and there's people that want to do stunts there all the time. And so the crazy ice climber that was kind of a non-starter. So I had to go through a very political and complicated process where I basically worked with everybody involved and had to convince them that although I'm an ice climber and Red Bull athlete, I'm not a nutcase. And what I do, I put a lot of thought into it and I have an excellent safety record.
And in the end we all work together really well and I'm standing at the bottom of this Niagara Falls trying to figure out how to climb it. And the ground shakes when you're in there, there's so much force and it's so complicated of an environment. And so it is just an incredibly complex and dynamic environment. And yet just because I spent a whole lifetime doing this and worked with a great team, we were able to climb it and that was a pretty cool thing.
Shelby Stanger:
How long did that take you, the actual climb? And when did you start? What time of day did you start? What time of year did you start?
Will Gadd:
Well, it took two years of work to get a permit and then it took about an hour to climb it. [inaudible 00:15:45] two years of planning and organizing and just figuring everything out and then about under an hour to climb it. And then as I've often said, I'm a decent climber, but I'm an exceptional poser. So then I did my job, which was to go and pose on this thing and that's what I did for about an hour and a half. And I had a great time doing that. Swinging around on beside Niagara Falls on ice tools, is awesome. But again, a lot of work. I really worked hard to make sure that I didn't leave any trace of climbing there and I had enough good gear that if I fell off I wasn't going to die.
That would be the worst thing I could do was fall off under massive public scrutiny and make my sport and climbing in general look bad. So I put a tremendous amount of work into making it safe enough that it's not safe, but it was safe enough that quite a lot could go wrong and I would be okay. In risk terms, I was trying to build capacity so that if I made normal human errors, I wouldn't get killed and nor would anybody on my crew.
Shelby Stanger:
What did that look like? What do you mean by that?
Will Gadd:
So the idea of safety in any of these sports or anything we do in life is trying to build systems that can handle errors. We all make errors and if you build systems that have room for those errors, then you live longer, which is cool. Living is awesome. And so for me that things like spending almost a day cleaning some of the ice that was there so that it wasn't all going to break off and then fall on, I've got a crew there as well. I've got 200 people that are involved in this thing, so I've got to keep them safe as well. So cleaning the ice, getting the positions for the camera crew, making sure that the person operating the boom right on the edge of Niagara Falls has good anchors and that the boom isn't going to fall off of the people below nor on me.
In some ways the climbing was the relative, that's what I do. I know how to do that, but all this other stuff to make it have capacity to deal with problems. And I had problems. My rope froze into a carabiner, but I had good people watching it and one of them spoke up and could have saved my life. But also studying the environment so that people will speak up and talk about the problems. And this is what I've done with my life is try to figure out how to do this stuff not safely, because it's not safe, but with a reasonable margin.
Shelby Stanger:
What was going through your head, because you have 200 crew and I'm sure I don't know, more people are watching you. What is going through your head the whole time? Are you stoked? Are you like, oh God, I better not mess up?
Will Gadd:
How these things work for me is that when I'm planning them and organizing the perspective is super broad. It's like I'm managing all these different things and then when it comes down to doing the thing, you have to be pretty narrow. It's like you've got the right people in the right places. It's like we've set that up, they need to do their jobs. What I need to do is climb this thing without falling off and causing a huge debacle. And so then you need to focus on doing things right. You get a good stick in the ice, your feet are good, your gear is good, and it's about doing the things right. When I was younger, I used to think mainly about not doing things wrong, and I found it's more powerful as I've gotten older to think about doing things well. How do I do these things well so they succeed and then that takes care of a lot of problems. And yeah, get to stay at our top of Niagara Falls and celebrate with a good team and do something cool, that doesn't get much better than life than that.
Shelby Stanger:
A lot of Will's adventures these days involve establishing new routes. Recently he's been working on setting up new lines in the Canadian Rockies and in China. Will is not exactly sure what he'll face on each climb, but that's where his experience comes in handy. Over the years, he's prioritized his safety on potentially dangerous adventures.
So you've also established a lot of new routes. What's the risk involved with establishing something that's brand new?
Will Gadd:
Yeah, I mean I love doing new things. That's what fires me up. I love going into complicated environments and figuring things out. That's what's cool. And for me, often those environments are relatively hazardous. I'm not figuring out how to trade money in different ways or something, although that's also another type of hazard. And the process is probably mentally very similar, whether you're figuring out a new way to look at the world in business or a new way to look at the world on climbing or surfing or paragliding or whatever. But that's what I love is those areas where there isn't a lot of knowledge. So you go in there and you're like, okay, how does this work? And what's going to kill me and what do I need to do to succeed here? And it's just a fascinating puzzle to me in any of these sports.
Shelby Stanger:
Let's talk about your approach to risk. You have had years of doing this and you have developed a unique approach. I am curious, how do you talk about it and what's your view of it and how do you teach it? And how has that evolved over the years?
Will Gadd:
Well, I think you take risk to do something meaningful. That's why we take risk is everything from starting a company to calling somebody up for a date. It's like a risk. And the basis of this for me is deciding if that risk is something you really care about or is important to your business function or whatever. And then if you're going to do that, can you do it with relative safety and what does that mean to you? On a really basic level, you could write risk out as hazard and mitigation. I want to do this cool thing. What's the upside of it? What are the consequences, good and bad, and what are the hazards or problems that might keep me from getting there? And then can I fix those hazards or mitigate them or not?
So with my kids, we use this all the time. We'll be out, especially when they were younger, we'd be out at about somewhere and we'd be hiking along and Rose be like, my younger daughter would be close to the edge and I'd look at her and be like, "So Rose, where are you at?" And she'd look over the edge and be like, "Oh Dad, this is bumps and bruises terrain." "Okay, well what are we going to do about that?" It's not enough to just recognize it. And she'd be like, "Well, I'm going to slow down a bit. I'm not going to run here, but I'm pretty good here."
And then we'd be somewhere more hazardous. We'd be in the mountains with a big drop-off walking or something like that and be like, "What level are we at now, Rose?" And she'd be like, "Oh Dad, this is serious. This is hospital terrain." And then it'd be like, "Okay, what are we going to do about that? Well, I'm going to hold your hand. I'm going to walk on the edge away from here." And then we'd be in some hideously dangerous environment like downtown San Diego. There's surfers cruising around, people have been drinking. And we'd be standing there at the light ready to go and I'd be like, "Okay, if this goes poorly, if we run out into the street, what's going to happen?" And she'd be like, "Death, Dad. Death." "So what are we going to do about that? Well, we're going to let the people with the surfboards go first because they probably understand the local situation here and we're going to look both ways."
And so we came up with a system of bumps and bruises, hospital and death, and we use this wherever we go in the mountains. And this gives them tremendous freedom. When they hit the playground, they're not concerned about it. I'm not saying be careful. I'm like, "What are the issues here?" And they'll be like, "Well, we probably shouldn't jump off the top of the steel rocket ship play structure like 20 feet off the ground and that could be hospital. Other than that, attack." And that's what you want is good risk management gives you freedom to do things in life.
Shelby Stanger:
What does this look like in an adult world? How do you teach this to adults?
Will Gadd:
It's pretty similar actually. You can get a lot more intellectual about this as well and think in terms of probability versus consequence, good consequence and bad consequence. And there's a lot of different systems you can use to think about that, but the first place to start is doing exactly what you're doing. Is asking those questions and trying to define the real risks and the real hazards and the real good and bad consequences and just engaging with it. And that's the first step, just thinking about it. And a lot of people tend to just sort of throw themselves at things rather than they could get through a little bit.
Shelby Stanger:
Have you had conversations with solo climbers a lot or highliners?
Will Gadd:
Oh yeah. I mean, I've done a lot of solo climbing. I just don't want that publicized because I do think it has an impact on people. And right now we're having a lot of deaths and fatalities in North America because people are going soloing and they're calling it scrambling. Scrambling is, when you go scrambling, you should be in sort of hospital terrain most of the time. But people, including a lot of elite climbers are saying, "Hey, I scrambled this 5.6 route." It's like, no, you soloed it and diminishing that risk does not help other people make good decisions. If somebody wants to solo and they get it and they've thought it through, then right on. I have no problem with people taking those, that's me. I'm there sometimes, but I just want it to be a better, more honest discussion than it is right now.
Shelby Stanger:
I appreciate that. I have no desires a solo, so I can't totally relate, but I can appreciate perspective and I'm glad that you're talking about risk in this way.
What's your approach to failure?
Will Gadd:
Well, some people are driven by excellence. I'm driven by not sucking. I hate sucking. Sucking sucks. And so when I fail, I try to figure out why I failed and how I can do better. Some people are sort of mellow about that and peaceful. I'm not. I like to drink coffee and sit in the dark until I figure out why I sucked and how I'm going to do better. And 80% of what I try, fails. 80% at least. I've been trying to go down Antarctica now for nine years. I've pitched that thing at least a dozen times, but I will get there, and so I keep trying. That's again, the basis of a lot of cool stuff in life is just try.
Shelby Stanger:
If you want to learn more about Will Gadd or get in touch, you can find Will on Instagram @realwillgadd. That's R-E-A-L-W-I-L-L-G-A-D-D. For those of you who love this episode with Will, I think you'll also enjoy our interview with the iconic climber, Conrad Anker. We'll link to that episode in the show notes. Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI Podcast network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, produced by Annie Fassler, Sylvia Thomas and Sam Peers Nitzberg of Puddle Creative. Our senior producers are Jenny Barber and Hannah Boyd. Our executive producers are Paolo Motila and Joe Crosby. As always, we love it when you follow the show. Take time to rate it and write a review wherever you listen. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest idea.