THE FUTURE ISTHE POSSIBLE

Adventurer Will Gadd grew up in Calgary, a city in western Canada. Every weekend his parents took him to nearby Canmore in the Rocky Mountains to hike, climb, and explore. “From a very early age, I was outside learning about how to stay warm, dry, and comfortable in extreme environments. This was a very lucky time for me, as I learned the basics of living well in the mountains,” he says.

Gadd has since parlayed his childhood experience into an extraordinarily long career as an ice-climber, paraglider and kayaker. He has a host of world-records and world-firsts to his name, from ice-climbing Niagara Falls to setting the paragliding distance record twice. In the last few years, however, the 56-year-old adventurer has been struck by the ever-starker effect climate change is having on his world. For example, in 2014 when he traveled to Mt. Kilimanjaro to climb the ice at the top of Africa’s tallest mountain, he was shocked by what he discovered there.

“There was far, far less ice on the mountain than my maps showed,” Gadd says. “Imagine booking a ticket to see the pyramids in Egypt, and you show up and all that’s left are a few stones! The ice on Kilimanjaro has been a constant for thousands of years, but now it’s disappearing at an extremely rapid rate, same as the ice in the Himalaya, Andes, Alps, and every glaciated area in the world. Kilimanjaro was the first time I really saw the scale of it all.”

It was concerns about global warming that prompted Gadd to join forces with glacial hydrologist Professor Jason Gulley in 2018 to descend into the Greenland ice sheet to collect data on how the meltwater percolating down through vertical shafts in the ice is affecting rising sea levels. “We were following the water down under the glacier, something which had not been done before,” Gadd explains. “Jason’s research re-wrote the models.”

Gadd works hard to educate people about the impact of climate change through his TV programmes, movies, articles and books, but his Kilimanjaro expedition also inspired him to make direct changes to his own lifestyle. He explains: “I calculated my own and my family’s carbon footprint five years ago, and set a goal of reducing it by half, which I’ve done. It’s not that hard honestly, and it’s been a fun adventure for my family. We’ve chosen more local adventures to reduce flying (my biggest carbon use), but always with the goal of being better, not perfect.”

Climate change or not, Gadd’s fundamental optimism and zest for adventure remain undimmed. “We live in the absolute best time ever to be human. We can fly through the air on paragliders, climb giant frozen icicles, jump off cliffs with parachutes, packraft, mountain bike, ski, dive underwater, and engage with our world in ways that would have been impossible to visualise 100 years ago. We’re in the golden age of adventure, where anything is possible,” he enthuses.

To pass the torch on to the next generation of adventurers, Gadd has been teaching multiple mountain sports for more than 40 years now. He loves teaching—while also regarding it as a responsibility. “Many people taught me about the mountains, and if we who have experience don’t do the same then that’s unfair. We were taught, so in turn we must teach,” he says.

When asked to pick the most amazing of his many adventures, Gadd’s response exemplifies his forward-looking, gung-ho spirit. “Honestly, it’s always about the future for me,” he says. “Learning new skills, developing new ideas, and executing the coolest, most interesting adventures I can imagine. That’s what drives me. The past is important, and forms the future, but the past is done. The future is the possible.”