How a man’s personal loss fueled a historic trip down Everest’s North Face

A mountaineer’s personal loss fueled his historic ascent and ski down Mount Everest’s treacherous North Face. 

Jim Morrison had dreamed about summitting the mountain’s peak, and when he made it to the top with filmmaker Jimmy Chin and a group of 12 others last October, he’d already completed what’s considered one of the world’s most challenging climbs. Everest’s north side stretches 29,000 feet, and it’s much darker and more exposed to the elements than some of the mountain’s other routes. 

“It is the holy grail of mountaineering,” Chin said, who attempted the climb with Morrison at least two other previous times before being thwarted by weather and crew issues.  

And even though they made it to the summit, for Morrison – it wasn’t enough. 

“My friends were up there celebrating and taking selfies, and really excited to be at the summit of Mount Everest coming up the direct North Face,” Morrison said. “And that’s when I strapped into my skis and had the challenge of, okay, how am I gonna make this first turn? How am I gonna make the second turn?”

He would spend the next four hours alone, with no room for error, skiing 9,000 feet down.

“We call it no fall zone, where you can’t make a single mistake,” Chin explained. “If you blow an edge or you lose your balance at all, you’re gone.”

Morrison said he had moments where he wanted to call it quits. 

“But I think, wait a second, I’m here right now. This is my life dream. It’s happening. I’m gonna make two more turns right here,” Morrison said.

The dream wasn’t his alone. 

It was something he and his partner Hilaree hoped to do together one day, before she died in 2022 after taking a fall while skiing in Nepal.

“This was a shared project that we had worked on together and conceived together. And I felt determined to try to complete it,” Morrison said.

It wasn’t the first tragedy in Morrison’s life—in 2011 his wife and two children died in a plane crash. 

He wants his legacy to be about moving forward.   

“I hope that people will walk away with a spring in their step and a renewed sense of confidence that they can go out and achieve their dreams,” Morrison said.

His extraordinary journey will live on forever in a film that Chin, an Academy Award winner, hopes to release later this year.

“For the rest of us who have been on this journey with Jim, to see him execute at that level was extraordinary in itself,” Chin said. “But to see him come out the other side, and the relief… it is the most significant ski descent that you can do on planet earth.”