Meet Canada’s Gutsiest Adventurer

Hitting your peak can feel a little melancholic. You’ve climbed the career ladder, gained the respect of your peers, won the lady of your dreams, bought the car you’ve always coveted, fathered a beautiful brood, been there, done that.

“There are so many cool things left to do. Entire planets in this universe that I’ve explored one one-billionth of.”

And now you wonder: where do I go from here? What’s left to do once you’ve summited the mountain of accomplishment, planted your flag and taken the requisite selfie?

Find a bigger, scarier mountain. That’s Will Gadd’s advice. Even after winning every major ice climbing title from the World Cup to the Winter X Games, being dubbed National Geographic’s 2015 Adventurer of the Year and becoming the first man to scale the frozen Niagara Falls, Canada’s daredevil extraordinaire still seeks wilder thrills. At 48, he shows no signs of mellowing out. What’s the good life worth, if it’s limits aren’t tested, explored?

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“I always need big challenges coming at me or I become a huge pain in the ass,” he explains. “I’ve got the Labrador gene; I need to chase the tennis ball every day or things fall apart.”

It’s an ironic statement, because Gadd routinely thrusts himself in situations that could entirely fall apart with one misplaced ice axe. Rappelling deep into underground mines in Sweden, ascending far up giant icebergs in the Labrador Sea—the man does things that test his will and shake his blood. They don’t call him Captain Adventure for nothing.

Take last January’s Niagara climb: dangling like a participle from a 150-foot wall of spray ice, a cataclysmic deluge of water roaring past him every second, he knew the tiniest error meant plummeting into a frozen cauldron of death. But he did it anyway. He is, through and through, a man of extremes.

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“I had a lot of officials telling me, ‘Hell no, you’re not doing that,’” says Gadd. “But anytime you get close to the edge, that’s where it’s interesting and meaningful. Often, my success isn’t about how physically gifted I am, but understanding complex environments that are trying to kill me.”

“I hate failure. It sucks.”

And that which doesn’t annihilate you, by Friedrich Nietzsche’s logic, strengthens you. Like the German philosopher, Gadd believes man should torch the tent-poles of his own limitations. It’s what motivates him to do things previously thought impossible, like paragliding a harrowing 800 kilometers down the spine of the Canadian Rockies all the way to the U.S. border. The sprawling, 35-day trek, which he embarked on last year with partner Gavin McClurg, marked the longest air journey ever by a paraglider, redefining the standards of the sport.

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“Six days in with 700 kilometres to go, it didn’t look good,” admits Gadd of the treacherous trip. “We had lots of wind and no motors—just the thermal lift of air circling us up into the sky—in a really remote, back country part of Canada. I started to wonder if we would pull it off. I’m not some positive, new age guy: I hate failure. It sucks.”

That’s not to say Gadd always succeeds. Half of his gutsy gambits, he confesses, don’t pan out. Missions have been aborted, money squandered. But he never settles. He just learns from it, transforms himself and keeps going all in. When your climb is infinite, it’s impossible to plateau—there is always the beyond. And, while Gadd can’t disclose what’s up ahead, he can guarantee no destination is off limits.

“There are so many cool things left to do,” he says. “Entire planets in this universe that I’ve explored one one-billionth of. I’ve been slacking. I need to get out there.”

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