PADDED SELL A cold-weather staple just keeps getting cooler.

If a Google search turns up no trace of an individual, does he exist? The Young Presidents’ Organization says he does, and surely the group that assembles global chief executives is a reputable source of information. Nonetheless, with no photo surfacing, I had my doubts – until I met Anthony Teen in the flesh. After speaking to him, I gathered why he has no digital footprint: Privacy concerns aside, he’s just too busy living.

Teen is the sort of daredevil who, in his youth, would climb mountains with skis strapped on his back so that he could fly down the slopes. Skiing led to mountain climbing, the type that required days crawling up a cliff and vertiginous overnight camps on a portaledge. The 46-year- old Kiwi has defied death, a real risk in his community of extreme skiers and climbers. And he has channelled all his hard- earned knowledge into creating a successful business. That story is on Page 30.

More than that, we have assembled in this edition individuals who have left their pampered environments to tackle the elements or foreign cultures. Adventurer Mike Horn has swum the entire stretch of the Amazon and circumnavigated the Arctic Circle. And who could have imagined the immaculately coiffed Paige Parker of today having to bathe in Siberia, contortionist style, to access trickles of water, and having her hair fall out because of its suspect quality? Yet, these are the character-moulding experiences that one does not get in school, the unforgettable adventures that one tells one’s grandchildren.

Life beyond grades? Oh yeah.