Alberta resident Will Gadd, 47, has been co-awarded the title of ‘adventurer of the year 2015’ by the US-based National Geographic magazine.
The title would add to his already impressive and long list of awards and competition wins for his amazing ice and rock climbing, kayaking, and paragliding feats around the world,
National Geographic named him and American Gavin McClurg for the prestigious title after the duo used paragliding and mountain climbing to fly some 650 km along the Rocky Mountains from McBride, British Columbia to the US border.
The marginal sport has become known as “fly-bivouac” or “fly-bivvy”
Gadd insisted that all forward travel be accomplished by paragliding not hiking.
“No motors, just flying along on a paraglider, going from thermal to thermal just like a hawk does”, Gadd told a reporter from the CTV television network this week.
They would land each night on high ground and camp out, climb to higher ground if necessary and launch toward the next stop the following morning if the weather held. At one point they were stranded by weather for four days.
Quoted on the National Geographic site, McClurg said, “It was absolutely terrifying terrain to fly through. We had to break all the rules of cross-country flying to get through huge sections of the route. You just don’t fly over terrain where you can’t land, and we had to do it continuously.”
The “longest air journey by paraglider” took 35 days and was filmed from a helicopter for Red Bull’s Explorer series.
Speaking to CTV network he says. “I just won the biggest ice-climbing competition in North America,” he said. “I keep thinking I’m not going to do any more competitions – I’m getting a bit old for that – but I keep winning,” he added
Gadd had also recently returned from scaling ice at Mount Kilimanjaro in November, but expressed dismay at how global warming has greatly reduced the snow and ice cover leaving a mostly barren desert surface
Gadd and McClung are now in the running for the magazine’s People’s Choice Adventurer. You can vote on the website until January 31, with the People’s Choice winner will be announced in February.
National Geographic Adventure site
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