Rising Stars: Meet Dean Cardinale

Today we’d like to introduce you to Dean Cardinale.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I was a career ski patrolman and avalanche forecaster at Snowbird Ski Resort. I guided in the off-season and eventually in 2007 I decided to start my own business, World Wide Trekking. Along with starting my adventure travel company, I wanted to give back to the communities where we travel so I started the Human Outreach Project 501c3 non-profit. The business has successfully grown over the years. Starting in my employee room at Snowbird, to a home office to a leased office and now we own our office building in Midvale. It has been a wonderful experience. It is a pleasure guiding people around the world on life-changing adventures! Whether we are trekking to Mt. Everest Base Camp, climbing Kilimanjaro or guiding trips through the Alps it is a fantastic way to show our guests our world and challenge them. It is exciting to see our guests accomplish their goals.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
Being a professional guide and running your own business are very different things. On adventures, we have struggled with weather, guests’ abilities and the mountains in general. Coordinating adventures in multiple different countries takes great patience and can be stressful. You always want to deliver the best guest experience and sometimes, in areas where we travel that is challenging. I have learned great patience in the mountains. The better I know an area, the better we can overcome the obstacles that get in our way. I have spent a career in World Wide Trekking building relationships overseas with trusted friends that help tremendously with all of our efforts. Of course, Covid was a very scary and difficult time to run a travel business but we focused on the things that we could control, refined our office operations, ran local small group trips in Utah and weathered the storm. In the end, I learned a lot about my business, my team, and myself.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
We guide adventures; Kilimanjaro, Everest Base Camp, European Alps, Iceland, Patagonia, Machu Picchu and more. We offer luxury adventures to help people challenge themselves and accomplish their goals. Our trips are amazing but giving back through our humanitarian efforts the Human Outreach Project has been incredibly rewarding. We have an orphanage in Tanzania, Africa, along with two school lunch programs feeding more than 2000 children daily. In Nepal, we have built two medical clinics in high-altitude areas, two primary schools and other programs. In Peru, we support two villages in the mountains. Here in Utah, we have a summer program called HOP Outdoors which brings students from at-risk areas of SLC to Snowbird Ski Resort for a day up the tram and hiking in the mountains. We also have a local program that delivers food supplies and holiday gift cards to veterans and their families at Thanksgiving and Christmas. We support more than 30 families each year. Of course, I am proud of my mountain accomplishments, summiting Mt. Everest and numerous mountains around the world or writing my book “Inspired | Lessons Learned from a Life of Adventure” I am proud of the business that I have built from the ground up but I am MOST proud of the way we give back and the humanitarian efforts around the world.

We’re always looking for the lessons that can be learned in any situation, including tragic ones like the Covid-19 crisis. Are there any lessons you’ve learned that you can share?
Yes! I learned to simplify things and focus on the things that I could control. I learned that one day at a time, we needed to focus on staying in business and staying productive even when we couldn’t travel. It was a difficult time but I really think it made us stronger as we moved forward. We always focused on moving forward. When we couldn’t travel, we hosted webinars called World Wide Trekking | Destination Series where I would go live every Saturday and show a presentation on one of our adventure destinations. We had to be creative and it was a good way to stay connected with our guests when they couldn’t travel and were basically stuck at home.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.wwtrek.com | www.humanoutreachproject.org
• Instagram: @wwtrek. | deancardinale
• Facebook: World WIde Trekking | Dean Cardinale
• Youtube: World Wide Trekking | https://www.youtube.com/@Wwtrek