Wow.

What a life. What a life story.

Rick Ridgeway was one of the first Americans to summit K2 in 1978.

He’s climbed new routes and explored little-known regions on six continents.

Spent a total of 5 years sleeping in a tent while adventuring.

A pioneer in filming extreme outdoor pursuits.

You might have read one of his other books — Seven Summits (1988), an account of how Frank Wells and Dick Bass planned to climb the highest mountain on each of the world’s seven continents.

Ridgeway later had some adventures with Reinhold Messner. In this book he doesn’t mention the controversy that Canadian alpinist Pat Morrow and then Messner claim to have completed the Seven LEGITIMATE Summits. 😀

Ridgeway — born 1949 — has outlived most of his climbing partners. A rare survivor.

His wife of near 40 years died too before he published his life story in October 2021.

It’s a summing up.

BEST in this book are his lifelong adventures with Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, and Doug Tompkins, who cofounded The North Face.

In fact, it was Ridgeway who was paddling with Tompkins in southern Chile 2015 when they capsized. Rick was rescued. Tompkins died of hypothermia.

Yvon Chouinard is still alive as well. Age 83.

All three of the do boys, as the friends called themselves, eventually made environmental protection the main focus of their lives.

I highly recommend this book.

Life Lived Wild by Rick Ridgeway.

It is hard to imagine my life if I hadn’t met Rick Ridgeway. Rick invited me on my first National Geographic expedition and taught me how to film, but more importantly he shared how to tell a good story. In Life Lived Wild Rick recounts the most poignant moments of his legendary career as an explorer, climber and conservationist, but mostly, as an extraordinarily observant and compassionate human being. He captures the essence of a lifetime of storytelling. — Jimmy Chin, Adventurer and filmmaker