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Outside Magazine April 2002

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The Big Idea: CASE STUDY #2: Defying Death for Fun & Profit
Risk Management
WILL GADD is a world-class adventurer who wants his exploits to pay off. He tackles breakthrough climbs all over the planet (sounds good), makes so-so money doing it (less good), and could easily get killed every time he goes to work (sounds bad). Is this any way to make a living?
By Brad Wetzler


	Gadd hanging out at the 2002 Ice Climbing World Cup, Interlaken, Switzerland

ON A WINDY, OVERCAST afternoon, Will Gadd—his auburn hair tousled, his head throbbing from a night of partying—grabs a fistful of red limestone with his right hand and hoists himself using a one-arm pull-up. He plants his shoe on a mere wrinkle in the rock, then reaches skyward for another hold.

A dual citizen of the United States and Canada, Gadd, 35, is one of the best climbers in the world, especially on ice—but "climbing" doesn't adequately describe what I'm watching. At 5-foot-11 and 165 pounds, Gadd is a lanky-but-nimble supersimian with a muscled back that curves like a cobra's hood. In essence he's an acrobat, and just now, moving without protection, he's crawling out to the underside of a rude overhang. He looks up at 600 feet of smooth rock, and then works his way back to solid ground to regroup and start again.

"Dude, this is rad!" he says. "Definitely my next major project!"

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It's an autumn day in the Canadian Rockies. Gadd is scrabbling around on Kid Goat Peak, about 50 miles west of Calgary, exploring a towering vertical streak left behind by a long-defunct waterfall. He spotted this route a few weeks ago from his pickup as he whizzed down the Trans-Canada Highway near his home in Canmore, Alberta. That night, Gadd scribbled "CLIMB WATER MARK" on his to-do list, following older entries like "PARAGLIDE ACROSS AMERICA" (which he did last summer) and "CLIMB 6,000-FOOT FROZEN WATERFALL IN NEPAL" (coming soon).

Canmore, a 10,500-person town in the middle of the Canadian Rockies, is prime habitat for funhogs, surrounded by world-class climbing crags, steep kayaking streams, and bright blue skies with rising thermals that can be ridden for hours on paragliders, hybrid craft that combine elements of parachutes and hang-gliders. Gadd climbs, kayaks, and paraglides at an elite level; he also caves, telemarks, and does just about anything else you can think of. But perhaps his most impressive talent—one shared by few of his extreme-sports colleagues—is his knack for, and love of, business. Gadd sells himself with the same intensity he throws at a wall, and his drive to succeed has given him the freedom to pursue his warped idea of fun while getting paid to do it. But he also serves as an object lesson for those of us who think a guy like him has it made.

That's because being chairman, CEO, and sole employee of the Will Gadd Biz involves a huge amount of work, hustle, headache, and hazard for the money. An athlete who plays baseball as well as Gadd plays risk sports would pull down 20 times what he makes—without the very real possibility of getting killed every time he suits up. Elite mountaineers like Ed Viesturs and Conrad Anker earn twice what Gadd does, mainly because their primary pursuit, expedition climbing in the Himalayas and other remote ranges, is more marketable to sponsors than Gadd's relatively obscure feats.

So for a talented toiler like Gadd, it's necessary to be a wheeler-dealer and to capitalize on every ounce of his ability. His annual gross is in the low six figures, most of it coming from endorsement deals with the climbing-equipment company Black Diamond, the Italian ski- and mountaineering-boot company Scarpa, the energy-drink company Red Bull and Voilé, which makes backcountry-ski accessories. He certainly earns it: climbing increasingly difficult routes up rock and ice, winning bouldering and ice-climbing competitions against guys barely half his age, and sticking his neck out with ever-riskier stunts. One example: last year's record-setting paraglider flight across the continental United States, from Ventura, California, to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, a six-week, 2,800-mile blitz in which Gadd and a team flew conventional paragliders while wearing large, motorized propellers strapped to their backs.

On the home front, Gadd's harried existence is made more harried by the presence of his charming but intense girlfriend, 34-year-old Kim Csizmazia, an equally strong-willed multisporter who competes with him for sponsorship bucks, running her own small business out of their Canmore condo.

"Dude. Wanna learn how to run downhill?"

It's Gadd, stepping off the wall, popping a piece of Nicorette gum as he starts to lope away. I take after him in a hopeless attempt to keep pace. Half running, half sliding, he flies down the mountain, weaving in and out of scrub juniper. By the time I catch up, he has stopped in a leafy clearing, where we see a strange sight: an abandoned log cabin, shimmering in the afternoon sun.

"Is anybody home?" Gadd says to the dilapidated house. "Creepy, eh?"

He pushes open the door and wades through toppled furniture, old pots and pans, and hundreds of yellow, musty books. I see Louis L'Amour novels, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Transcendental Meditation, and the French S&M classic Story of O. Gadd picks up a three-ring notebook and reads aloud from a letter that was never sent, apparently written by the cabin's stress-addled occupant and addressed to a woman who cheated on him. "You'll never get away from me," he warns. "You'll always be in my sight."

"Dude! This guy went sideways," says Gadd. "Check this out. He's got a to-do list!" With a spiderweb covering his head like a hair net, Gadd clears his throat and reads the itemized goals. "One: Burn camp. Two: Make money. Three: Go to Canmore."

"Jeez," he shudders. "This dude needed some serious discipline."

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