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Canmore ice climber Will Gadd talks about climbing Niagara Falls ice wall

CALGARY- Here’s something that is incredibly cool and terrifying all at the same time.

Canmore’s Will Gadd has become the first person to scale the ice wall at Horseshoe Falls part of Niagara Falls.

Gadd described his historic climb with Global News.

He says it was incredibly tricky, other than the obvious, the falls constantly vibrate the ice.

“I’ve been ice climbing for 30 years and it took all of that experience and very specific training for the last 6-8 months to be ready for this climb.”

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It included a lot of time spent in Banff and Lake Louise climbing at frozen waterfalls.

“It was a great experience. It’s Niagara Falls Falls. The largest most famous waterfall in the world and I got to climb it. That’s a very lucky experience,” Gadd said.

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It’s a climb that Gadd never thought would happen.

“Every ice climber has thought about climbing Niagara Falls. It’s such a well known waterfall, it’s in the cold part of North America and everybody thought about it. But it’s very unlikely you’d ever get permission to climb there. So I just wrote it off that it would never happen,” Gadd said.

But what a rush when he reached the top.

Gadd just won the National Geographic adventurer of the year award for a paragliding trip across the Rockies that he did last year.

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