Adam Derick Andrade is a writer, philosopher, and translator whose life bridges technology, mountaineering, and Buddhist wisdom in a way that reflects both adventure and introspection. Raised in Mississippi and Alabama, he developed a strong curiosity for learning and an enduring love of sports while cultivating an early fascination with computer and hardware hacking, network security, artificial intelligence, and electronics. He also began playing the drums at a young age, a practice that remains part of his daily life in Colorado. After graduating high school early, he entered Auburn University to study Computer Engineering, where his interest in systems, both digital and human, began to take shape.
Following university, Adam spent a decade pursuing a life of alpinism, training in the North Cascades of the Pacific Northwest and the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. He studied at the American Alpine Institute, guided in remote alpine terrain, and served with San Juan County Search and Rescue and the Silverton Avalanche School. A near-fatal avalanche changed everything, redirecting him from the pursuit of summits toward deeper philosophical inquiry and a search for meaning beyond physical challenge.
Within a week of that event, Adam met his teacher, Geshe Michael Roach, and began studying Pabongka Rinpoche’s A Gift of Liberation, Thrust into Our Hands. His studies deepened at Sera Mey Monastery in India, where he immersed himself in Buddhist philosophy and the Tibetan language. He later joined the Asian Classics Input Project, now the Asian Legacy Library, contributing to the preservation and digitization of sacred texts in India and Mongolia, and went on to collaborate with the Mixed Nuts Translation Group of the Diamond Cutter Classics.
Now based in Colorado, Adam continues his philosophical writing, translation, and teaching, integrating the logic of Dharmakīrti and the insights of Tsongkhapa into his work. When not at his desk, he can often be found drumming, pursuing rock and ice climbing and ski mountaineering objectives, training for ultramarathons, or exploring Colorado’s high peaks with his daughter, Ava Grace, and their border collie, Gracie. Together they are working toward an ambitious family project, attempting to climb the one hundred highest peaks in Colorado, one step, one lesson, and one summit at a time.
