Dean grew up in Catskill, New York where he learned to ski and fell in love with the sport. After graduating from Keene State College Dean headed west to Salt Lake City, UT, where he earned a spot on the ski patrol at Snowbird Ski Resort.

During his years on ski patrol, Dean moved into snow safety and later became an avalanche forecaster, where his focus was broadened to managing patrollers and making mountain wide decisions. For 12 years Dean served as the President of Wasatch Backcountry Rescue (WBR), a coalition of volunteers who provide mountain and avalanche rescues. During his time as president, Dean developed WBR partnerships with snow safety professionals from nine Utah ski areas and was inducted into the International Commission for Alpine Rescue for his efforts to improve mountain and avalanche rescue services and methods.

While in Utah, Dean naturally fell into mountaineering and guiding, he loved sharing his experiences in the mountains and helping others achieve their goals. He began to guide domestic and international mountaineering and climbing trips and has since summited Mt. Everest, Mt. McKinley, Carstensz Pyramid, Kilimanjaro, and Mt. Elbrus. He has only two of the seven summits left on his list.

Dean Cardinale has spent the last 25 years perfecting his ability to craft environments in which guests can excel and achieve their lofty goals. His risk management, attention to detail, strong leadership, and lively personality, has led hundreds of guests to summits and remote locations around the globe.

Dean’s drive to provide exceptional service and his dedication to the local communities he travels through has shaped him into a successful entrepreneur and humanitarian. In 2006 he founded World Wide Trekking and shortly after established the Human Outreach Project, a non-profit dedicated to giving back to communities that he travels to with WWTrek guests.

Dean has delivered presentations highlighting his many adventure expeditions and has been featured in several national broadcast television programs run on the History Channel, National Geographic Channel, BBC, CNN, Fox news, Outdoor Life Network, the Discovery Channel and the major network affiliates. He has recently published a book, Inspired, which details some of his adventures and resulting lessons learned.