Gadd’s Truth: Pay It Forward



Will Gadd discusses how the mountains have shaped his life, how he shares what he's learned — and how his mother once fought off a bear.

Lessons learned in the mountains shouldn’t be kept to oneself.

I travel to outdoor festivals around the world where I regularly speak to large audiences of outdoor sports enthusiasts — people like you. They all enjoy my shows, even the small percentage of them who are sober.

In this festival environment I could show pictures of falling icicles and people would be thrilled; in fact, I do show a video of a falling icicle and people react as if I’m actually riding the icicle myself. I also do corporate presentations, and the main thing I’ve learned is that it’s a lot tougher to get people in suits to laugh — especially at 7:00 a.m. when they’re all sober. I recently did a corporate presentation on leadership and risk; two topics I figured I know something about as I usually lead when I climb and I’m still alive despite more than 30 years of continuously risky living.

In retrospect, my qualifications may not have been what the suits had in mind, but I showed them pictures and shared stories of climbing falling icicles, scaling mountains, paragliding at illegal altitudes and all the lessons I’d learned along the way (think negatively, adapt to the world, run away early and of course always bring a headlamp). I had high hopes that some of what I was saying would resonate with them — and the first few questions after the show were positive. But it all went sideways when an older lady in the back asked, “Why are you like you are, and what do your parents think of all of this crazy outdoor stuff?” My carefully prepared graphs of ROI on risky mountain sports hadn’t meant anything to her; she wanted to know what my mom thought of it all.

“Well,” I said, “it’s all my mom’s fault.” This got a better laugh than anything thus far, so, flush with success, I charged ahead.

“You see, my mom once fought off a bear while camping in the mountains with me when I was three. She was by herself except for me and my three-month-old little brother, who wasn’t any help either.”

True story — a lot of who I’ve become is because of who my parents were and are. My father is the well-known naturalist, Ben Gadd, author of what anyone interested in the Canadian Rockies refers to as, “The Bible;” an extremely thorough guide to the rocks, animals and plants of the Rocky Mountains. While other children watched cartoons on Saturday morning I was treated to monologues on mountain geology and ecology from my father as he drove the family to the mountains every weekend, as well as mountain history from my mom. Before I know who Sir John A. McDonald was, I knew his wife, Lady Agnes, was so intoxicated with the beauty of the Canadian Rockies that she rode across them on the cowcatcher of a train in 1886. This story taught me two things: riding on the cowcatcher of a train sounded fun and that risky and socially inappropriate behaviour is justified by the sheer magic of the mountains.

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