Snowbird's Dick Bass: on life, skiing, and the climb to success.

• Author: Horowitz, Alan
• Position: Profile

Snowbird's Dick Bass On Life, Skiing, and the Climb to Success

Listening to Dick Bass, president of Snowbird, is like going down the Gad chutes at his year-round winter and summer resort. He's wild, crazy, unpredictable, exhilarating, always on the edge. Known for his mountain exploits (the first to climb the highest peaks on each of the seven continents) as well as his dedication to quality skiing, Bass is something of an icon in the ski world.

* On Life: "My life has been a real roller-coaster ride and pressure cooker ever since we started here. I'm not going to atrophy on the vine. I'm 62. Most of my friends are sitting at the 19th hole and playing gin rummy and shooting the breeze. That ain't going to be my life."

* On Idealism: "I was going to be a boy's prep school teacher. I was going to be a Chips reincarnate. Did you see The Dead Poet's Society? That was me. I was going to be that very thing. My real love was literature and poetry. But, you know when you go to school you become more practical [he's an oil geologist]. I think it's a shame we lose a lot of idealism in college."

* On Goals: "It's my dreams of the future that sustain my present agony. I don't love all the stuff I've been going through. It's just like climbing a mountain. The mountains were hell. I didn't climb those things because they were fun. I climbed because of the goal. What we gain too easily we esteem too lightly. If it's a goal that stretches me out and takes everything I have to get there, by gosh, I'm going to get a greater sense of well-being, a greater sense of having lived."

* On Goals: "It's my dreams of the future that sustain my present get us off our humps, make...