Ep. 818: Life Lived Wild - Rick Ridgeway
Adventure Sports Podcast
Curt Linville
4.6 • 579 Ratings
🗓️ 29 March 2022
⏱️ 61 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
From “Life Lived Wild: Adventures at the Edge of the Map":
By the time he was thirty, Rick Ridgeway had gone on more adventures than most people do in an entire lifetime and calculates that he’s spent over five years of his life sleeping in tents. Called “the real Indiana Jones” by Rolling Stone magazine, Ridgeway doesn't shy away from unknown territory. In fact, he seeks it.
Ridgeway is recognized as one of the world’s foremost mountaineers. He was part of the 1978 team that were the first Americans to summit K2, the world's second-highest mountain, and he has climbed new routes and explored little-known regions on six continents. What really comes alive in Life Lived Wild are his relationships with his fellow travelers, such as Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, The North Face founder Doug Tompkins, and filmmaker Jimmy Chin. Some companions don’t make the return journey.
Ridgeway is also an environmentalist, writer, photographer, filmmaker, and businessman. For fifteen years beginning in 2005 he oversaw environmental affairs at the outdoor clothing company Patagonia and served as the VP of Environmental Initiatives. He has authored six books and dozens of magazine articles and produced or directed many documentary films. He was honored by National Geographic with their Lifetime Achievement in Adventure Award and was awarded the Lowell Thomas Award by the Explorers’ Club. Ridgeway serves on the boards of Tompkins Conservation and the Turtle Conservancy. He lives in Ojai, California.
Rick's new book is called "Life Lived Wild: Adventures at the Edge of the Map"
Instagram: @rickridgeway
Support The Adventure Sports Podcast monthly by going to Patreon.com/AdventureSportsPodcast or make a one-time donation to the show here.
Have the adventure of a lifetime by applying for a 2022 seasonal position with Avid4 Adventure at Avid4Adventure.com/jobs. Let them know you heard about it from Adventure Sports Podcast!
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hey folks, welcome to the Adventure Sports podcast. |
| 0:25.3 | Just a few things before we jump in. |
| 0:28.0 | This one is special. |
| 0:30.5 | Rick is nothing short of a legend in the outdoor adventure community, in a conservation community. |
| 0:38.1 | And so we're kind of taking a different approach here. |
| 0:40.1 | Rick recently released a book about his life, |
| 0:43.0 | Life Lived Wild Adventures at the Edge of the Map. |
| 0:46.9 | So you see this title and think, okay, you know, life lived wild. |
| 0:50.5 | You know, that could be the name of any book written by any person on this show. A lot of them |
| 0:54.9 | live a wildlife. But Rick is, I mean, it's on another level. He was a part of the team to first |
| 1:02.1 | climb, Summit K2, American team to Summit K2, the second highest mountain in the world. He's done |
| 1:08.1 | dozens and dozens of adventures all around the world that we're going to talk about today. He was there at the world. He's done dozens and dozens of adventures all around the world |
| 1:11.7 | that we're going to talk about today. He was there at the beginning of the founding of |
| 1:16.6 | Patagonia and the North Face with folks like Yvonne Chouinard, Doug Tompkins. He helped Jimmy Chin |
| 1:23.4 | get his film career started. So this guy has just had his hands in some of the biggest and most |
| 1:29.9 | important moments of adventure history and conservation history. So he has done so much. He's got |
| 1:36.5 | a national geographic lifetime achievement and adventure award and is on the board of countless |
| 1:42.5 | organizations that make important decisions |
| 1:44.7 | about conservation of places probably close to you. So it's an honor to talk to Rick. I honestly |
| 1:50.7 | don't think we even, we barely scratched the surface of his story. And I will say this book |
| 1:56.9 | is one that my three-year-old son can't put down because, well, there's a few pictures in it, so that helps. But because the three-year-old can't really read, it is going to be one of those books that I'm reading to my kids as they get older. It's going to be one of those really important things that we kind of have in the house and things I reference. The stories are unbelievable. The moments of history, like I said, are just unreal that |
| 2:19.0 | Rick has witnessed. So it was a huge pleasure to talk to him, and I hope to do it again soon. So |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Curt Linville, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Curt Linville and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.