Cory Richards

Cory Richards is an American mountaineer and photographer, born in May 1981 and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, where his father taught him to climb from the age of five. With Simone Moro and Denis Urubko he made the first winter ascent of Gasherbrum II on 2 February 2011, which made him the first American to climb an eight-thousander in winter; the team was caught in an avalanche on the descent but reached base camp. His film of the expedition, Cold, won the Grand Prize at the 2011 Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival, and National Geographic named him Adventurer of the Year for 2012. He summited Everest without bottled oxygen in 2016, was a National Geographic Photographer Fellow, and wrote the 2024 book The Color of Everything.