Hitting New Heights
Far from retiring quietly, one Member is forging a life of adventure.
Bradley Smith didn’t expect to be spending his 60s climbing snow-capped peaks, sailing oceans and surfing Hawaiian waves. But he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Sure, I can spend a lot of time and money drinking vodka martinis in the Four Seasons,” says the 65-year-old Member. “But they taste a lot better after you’ve hiked 19,000 feet [5,790 meters].”
After a career in investment banking in the financial hubs of New York and Asia, Smith settled in Hawaii. He says that his drive and “type-A personality” that helped him succeed in business is now paying dividends in the great outdoors.
A renewed approach to fitness has also been key to Smith’s life transformation.
“I was always interested in staying in shape,” he says. “But over the last few years, I’ve stepped it up.”
While Smith was a competitive middle-distance runner in high school and frequented the gym during his corporate years, his “much more holistic” workouts focus on bodyweight exercises, functional movements and yoga.
“After my first yoga session, I felt so good because my body had moved in a range of motion it probably hadn’t moved in for 40 years,” he says.
That single half-hour yoga session 15 years ago, he says, “completely changed [his] life” and he began looking for challenges beyond the gym.
In 2013, Smith and his then 16-year-old son climbed Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain at 5,895 meters. The climb whet his appetite for more.
He set his sights on Ecuador’s 6,310-meter Mount Chimborazo in 2020. But bad weather forced him to abandon his attempt.
“We were in 3 or 4 feet of fresh snow,” he says. “And that’s very hard to climb in.”
Earlier this year, Smith and his son returned to Ecuador to climb the country’s second-highest mountain, Cotopaxi (5,897 meters). Reaching the summit, Smith says, was “the most beautiful feeling in the world,” but not without its challenges.
“It was a hard grind,” he says. “There are points where you’re thinking, ‘What the hell am I doing here?’ But you’ve just got to push through.”
Smith hasn’t limited his adventures to dry land. A keen surfer, he took up sailing in 2009 and, with a skeleton crew of friends, he sailed from Long Beach in California to Honolulu last summer. It was a two-week, sleep-deprived voyage.
“But to be up at 5am and watch the sun rise over the Pacific—and not see any land or boat in sight—is just a great experience,” he says.
And Smith isn’t done yet. Next year, he plans to climb Argentina’s 6,960-meter Aconcagua, the highest peak outside the Himalayas, then sail more than 4,300 kilometers from Hawaii to Tahiti.
While such exploits might have their dangers, Smith says, they are also life-affirming.
“People are animals and when they lose touch with their physical nature and the primitive parts of themselves, I think they really lose a lot,” he says. “When you’re on the edge, it’s just a good gut check that you’re still alive.”
Words: David McElhinney
Top image: Bradley Smith at the summit of Ecuador’s Mount Cotopaxi
