He’s the only person who’s ever done it. But looking back, Will Gadd isn’t sure he would repeat his most iconic ascent. Climbing 167 feet up a frozen stretch of Niagara Falls really was that hard.
“It’s that spray ice I was talking about earlier. And if you get swept into the river there the outcomes are not good. It’s legit, it’s scary, it’s hard. And I don’t know if I want to do it again honestly,” Gadd said during an interview with Nick VinZant of the Profoundly Pointless podcast.
Gadd climbed Niagara Falls in 2015 after nearly two years of planning, preparation and training. The hardest part, convincing everyone to let him do it.
“They all said no, you can’t do this. Never. And then I would call back and they would say expletive no. And literally, if I see you here I’m going to arrest you.
After developing a safety plan that Gadd jokingly says was as tall as him, officials finally said yes.
Now, he just needed the right conditions. Straddling the border of Canada and the United States, Niagara Falls is plenty cold. But with over 3,100 tons of water rushing past every second, the falls don’t always freeze.
Finally, in January of 2015, a portion of the falls froze in just the right way. And Gadd headed up the Horseshoe Falls section of Niagara Falls.
“I literally had to warm up my ice tools and scrape the ice off them – that's how much spray was coming off the falls. It's such a violent place,” Gadd told Red Bull media in 2015.
The climb propelled Gadd to international fame. Sparking national and international news coverage.
“Who would have thought that after I quit my job to become a profession icicle whacker I would end up on CNN. You don’t know where the cool stuff is gonna take you and it took me to a pretty cool place.”
To hear the rest of the interview with Professional Ice Climber Will Gadd check out the link below. Gadd talks about how he got into Ice Climbing, his next big project and crushed vs. cubed ice.