Risk Management | Outside Online

You Are Here:

Home >> Risk Management

Today's Question
How do you make primitive snowshoes? answer

What should you do if you get lost driving in a snow storm? answer

Today's Question
What is the greenest ski and snowboard on the market? answer

Can I really damage a coral reef with sunscreen while snorkeling? answer

What kind of dog will make me look manlier? answer
Is there a sport that safely combines my twin passions for guns and kayaks? answer
How come most of the world's cultures enjoy eating goat, but Americans don't? answer

Online Favorites

Special Issues

Photo Galleries

Outside Magazine April 2002

Page:

The Big Idea: CASE STUDY #2: Defying Death for Fun & Profit
Risk Management


	Gadd in Switzerland, taking a deep-thoughts break from his toys, tools, and toils

GADD'S FAVORITE philosopher is the iron maiden of no-apologies capitalism, Ayn Rand, whose novels Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead celebrate the ennobling power of greed. ("I skip the story," he says, "and read the long monologues.") To put it mildly, Gadd wasn't supposed to turn out this way. His father, Ben, was a crunchy socialist from Colorado who moved to Calgary during the Vietnam War, eventually settling in the scenic mountain burg of Jasper. A strict ethicist, he encouraged his sons to be self-reliant and to question authority, which backfired when he drew the line on young Will's burgeoning instinct to make money.

"I wasn't even able to have a lemonade stand if my goal was to turn a profit," Gadd laments.

From his dad, Will learned how to climb and ski almost as soon as he could walk, and at age eight he climbed his first peak, 11,453-foot Mount Athabasca, in the Canadian Rockies. At 16, Gadd was shipped off to the White Mountain School, an outdoorsy prep academy in Bethlehem, New Hampshire, where he stood out as a precocious rebel. "When he showed up, he was already this completely formed little man—a total freak," says Wendy May, a former dorm adviser at the school. "The other boys didn't know what to think of him. He argued politics, could climb 5.13—and he even had a girlfriend. Wow, now that was big."

Gadd went on to Colorado College in Colorado Springs, graduating in 1989 with a degree in political science and taking an internship at Climbing. More accurately, he created the internship. ("They'd never had an intern," he says, "but I explained what one was and they hired me.") After three months he felt deskbound, went back to school for a semester, and then moved into his truck and climbed throughout North America for a year, subsisting mostly on popcorn and rice cakes.

About that time he met Dale Goddard, a Boulder-based climber whom Gadd only half-jokingly dubbed his "messiah," because he taught him both the science and art of climbing. In 1991 Gadd made climbing his job, joining the World Cup sport-climbing circuit. He "won some and lost some," he says, and managed to become the four-time Canadian national champion, earning about $10,000 a year over four years.

But the rice cakes got old, and by 1994 Gadd had quit sport climbing cold turkey, moved to Boulder, gotten married to a climber named Susy Levin, and taken a desk job doing marketing for a small climbing-gear company. He spent his leisure hours kayaking and paragliding, a new danger sport that caught his fancy. He notched several first descents on Colorado rivers, paddling down steep, low-volume streams and flinging himself off waterfalls. A friend quipped that Gadd was "a 911 call waiting to happen."

Then came his 30th birthday—and a pre-midlife crisis that prompted Gadd to brood about financial security. "I got scared," he says. "I didn't want to spend the rest of my life as a cog in the machine." He split from Levin and fell in love again—this time with mixed climbing. Working with ice-climbers Jeff Lowe and Helgi Christenson, he took on a 110-foot frozen waterfall near Vail that looked like an upside-down wedding cake made of ice. Nobody had ever tried anything remotely as difficult: The route featured massive ice tendrils with daggers coming down like chandeliers, all surrounded by crumbly limestone. Gadd and Lowe pulled off the climb, rated it M-9 (the hardest rating in mixed climbing at the time), and named it Amphibian—because it was neither rock nor ice, but something new altogether.

In 1998 Gadd traveled to Iceland to make a documentary about his quest for the hardest mixed route on earth. He found it in a 200-foot monster he called Brennivin. On that trip he got to know Csizmazia, arguably the best female ice climber in the world. She was as multitalented as Gadd, having been a ski racer, mountain-bike racer, adventure racer, and superb climber with a reputation for taking on risky pitches. Though petite, she was a physical powerhouse with a bodybuilder's musculature. Gadd fell for her, and soon after they left Iceland, they were a couple.

Page: