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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

"WOULD YOU WANT her coming after you?" Gadd asks me, holding a plate of raw chicken parts. "Do you think you could take her on?"

It's seven o'clock on a Thursday night; Gadd and Csizmazia are making barbecued chicken and corn on the cob. He's referring to Csizmazia's reputation for being a badass—and no, I don't think I could take her on. A famous tale makes the rounds among climbers that, at an event in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, during the 2000 Ice Climbing World Cup, she, not Gadd, walloped a former judge who was heckling Gadd.

Did it happen? "Yeah, I nailed him," Csizmazia tells me, carrying salad to the dinner table. She turns to Gadd and busts his chops about his cooking technique. "You're going to use that?" she says, pointing at a bottle of barbecue sauce that's past its expiration date.

"Why not?" Gadd says. "It'll just burn off anyway."

Their relationship is a bit lunatic. Csizmazia is also sponsored by Black Diamond, among other companies, and she makes a living working as a climbing instructor and endorsing products. Since Will and Kim pursue the same line of work at the same level of intensity, their egos are always battling for supremacy.

"You heard Gadd has an ego?" she asked me facetiously one night. "You're kidding! Egotistical? Never."

Last summer, during Gadd's six-week paragliding trip across the country, their low-simmer love feud boiled over. During a routine paraglide landing in Canmore before the cross-country trip started, Csizmazia tore ligaments in her knee. The injury relegated her to riding shotgun and grazing on Cheetos in the chase car for the next six weeks. Feeling like a caged lioness in a traveling circus of men, she made it obvious that she was having a lousy time, frequently giving the rest of the team, including Gadd, the silent treatment.

Gadd was grumpy himself—he was annoyed with the paragliding motors, which constantly broke down, and he thought a few of his half-dozen teammates behaved like whiny amateurs. The result was a sort of snobby petulance on his part that pissed off other teammates. On the final 60-mile leg, from Rocky Mount to Kitty Hawk, Gadd made the mistake of radioing down and saying he was bushed, that he'd really like to stop for the day.

This was not what Csizmazia, desperate for the whole thing to end, wanted to hear, so she let Gadd know in no uncertain terms that he was being a wimp.

"Will," she radioed back, "I really think you should finish this thing right now!" Gadd didn't argue. He flew on to the final destination—the Wright Brothers Memorial on the Outer Banks.

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