Growing up in the mountains of Utah, Cory Richards was surrounded by the outdoors. His father, a high school teacher and a ski patroller, spent years teaching Cory and his brother how to ski, climb, and survive in the wild. Despite the outdoor paradise, Richards’ early life was fraught with violence, grief, and mental illness. After being diagnosed with bipolar disorder and dropping out of high school, Richards found solace in photography and climbing, seeking out the farthest reaches of the world to escape the darkness.

Cory’s advanced mountaineering skills enabled him to shoot stories that were largely out of reach to others. He is the first and only American to climb one of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks in winter, summiting Gasherbrum II in the Karakoram Himalaya of Pakistan, in 2011. On the descent, Cory and his team were swept away and buried by an avalanche, narrowly escaping with their lives. His documentation of the climb and aftermath of the avalanche was made into the award-winning documentary, COLD and his self-portrait moments after climbing out appeared on the cover of the 125th anniversary issue of National Geographic. The experience also triggered Cory and prompted him to confront the trauma of his past and evaluate his state of mental health.

Five years later, In 2016, Cory and climber Adrian Ballinger climbed Everest without supplemental oxygen, sharing it in real-time through Snapchat - the first time a serious expedition had been shared on the platform. They garnered over two billion media impressions for the effort, bringing Everest to life for the rest of us and establishing Snapchat as a legitimate storytelling medium for adventure pursuits.

Cory has published 12 feature assignments in National Geographic, documenting his expeditions to Antarctica, Myanmar, the Okavango Delta, and others. He is a National Geographic Adventurer of the Year, a Photography Fellow, and a two-time recipient of an Explorer’s Grant. As he shared with the world more recently, he is also bipolar.  As he describes it, for years he lived madly to keep from going mad.

Cory recently hit pause to share his story.  In this raw and beautifully written memoir, The Color of Everything (2024, Penguin Random House), Cory shares his inner landscape, emotional struggles, and a lifetime of exploration and adventure.  A companion photography book, his first solo collection, Bi-Polar will be published this fall (2024, Ten Speed Press).

“Cory Richards tells this hard story with the same ferocious intensity, wit, and elegant keenness by which he has made stunning photographs and climbed killer mountains. The combination of risk and aplomb is amazing.”

 - David Quammen, author of Breathless