The hunt for a greater, riskier and more difficult challenge found Will Gadd; or perhaps, like on many occasions, it was Will Gadd who found it.
Swiftly curving between snowy-tipped mountain peaks with heart-pounding maneuvering beside a complete stranger, this was unlike any paragliding expedition done and that’s exactly what Gadd sought – an 800-kilometre bivvy paragliding expedition that started in McBride, British Columbia and soared through the rugged and striking Rocky Mountain Trench over snowy summits and between valleys lined with rows of dark green pines and glassy water bodies to the United States border.
At times, the trip’s finish line was a mirage, and the rareness of the feat caught attention as the Canmorite was recognized as a standout for the 10th annual National Geographic 2015 Adventurer of the Year for paragliding. A first-time winner of the Nat Geo award, Gadd joins 13 other worldly 2015 adventurer winners for such expeditions as swimming, climbing, and paragliding partner Gavin McClurg.
It’s been complete madness for the 47-year-old over the past six weeks, which is a good thing, Gadd said. A trip to Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, to climb the remaining ice on the famous African mountain ignited his fast-paced month. From Africa, Gadd rushed back to Banff for the world premiere of his film Frozen Titans at the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival and was then awarded the National Geographic Adventurer of the Year.
The Nat Geo award is an honour, said Gadd, as he recounts the three-week paragliding trip that included manually reaching a summit and using thermal wind gusts to glide.
“I think at the beginning of the trip we had no idea whether it was going to work or not and gambled a fair amount on the idea that it could work. It seemed logical, but nobody had attempted what we were doing in the Canadian Rockies,” Gadd said.
There is a technique to distance flying in using a thermal updraft to gain altitude by circling and when the thermal runs out of strength, then gliding to gain distance.
He and McClurg played their hand against thick black smoke from the summer’s B.C. forest fires, and an eerie unpredictability of how the expedition would unfold.
“Initially things looked pretty good … things were going great and all of a sudden this forest fire smoke kicked in and shut us down and we weren’t really getting anywhere. I think in the first five days, maybe six days, we had flown about 80 kms, (or) 90 kms. It’s going to take a long time to get down at that rate so it was a real up and down.
“There was a big fire near Canal Flats and that was on our flight path, but because of the smoke and some other fires from the west of B.C., we didn’t get there until that was more or less under control; we couldn’t have flown through there either way.”
The paragliding expedition had a different game plan at first, which Gadd had been apathetic towards. He says normally a lot of these trips end up with more walking than flying – something he wanted no part of. But after some tweaking of the flight’s formula to make it something unique, they had only one real rule set for themselves.
“I wanted to do one that was all flying; our only real rule was that all forward progress had to be done by the paraglider,” Gadd said. “So what we’re doing is flying along and we’d find some sort of likely looking place up on top of a mountain and land there and do it again the next day.”
It was a much sturdier test this way as they often bushwhacked through B.C.’s dense backcountry for some of the roughest hiking Gadd has ever experienced. There is “no polite word” for what he thinks of B.C. brush when it gets going, he said with a laugh.
On the trip’s best day, Gadd glided a couple of hundred kilometres with the “best view in the world.” On the trip’s worst days, Gadd would be stranded waiting for better conditions to restart the trip.
One of the things Gadd is most proud of is that no one on his trips has been seriously injured. With Gadd in the skies was Idaho paraglider McClurg – the two started the trips as strangers. It was kind of funny, said Gadd, most of the time when he does these types of trips he really wants to know the people he’s on it with. It could have really gone “sideways.”
“It’s a serious undertaking; you don’t want to be out there with anybody but the best,” Gadd said. “Fortunately, we got along really well and I definitely checked his references … checked with friends and they all said he was crazy but in a really good way.”
Their two gliding styles match up well too, something that doesn’t always end up that way.
“We tried something new and figured out ways to make it work. It didn’t come easy, but we pulled it off,” Gadd said. “A little decision can have a big impact in mountain sports, particularly aviation. Fortunately there were no serious injuries.”
It was “really rewarding” for Gadd to execute a successful trip like this and, there’s still a chance for Gadd to own the National Geography “People’s Choice Vote” for Adventurer of the Year crown.
Interested folk can head to the National Geographic website and follow the links to vote. Polls end on Jan. 31, 2015 and the announcement will be held in February.
