BURSTLast fall, American climber and skier Jim Morrison, 50, made mountaineering history by summiting Everest and completing the first successful ski descent of the mountain’s Superdirect route, linking the Hornbein and Japanese Couloirs.
The Oct. 15 descent followed a 12-member expedition supported by Sherpas and documented by climber and filmmaker Jimmy Chin. Morrison reached the 8,849-metre summit at 12:45 p.m. before beginning his ski descent shortly before 2 p.m., tackling 3,650 metres of vertical terrain on slopes reaching 50 degrees.
The route has a grim history. Snowboarder Marco Siffredi died during an attempt in 2002, and his body was never recovered. Morrison’s descent took four hours and five minutes, with a bare-rock section forcing him to remove his skis and rappel roughly 200 metres before continuing. At the summit, Morrison scattered the ashes of his late partner, Hilaree Nelson, who died on Manaslu in 2022. The pair had shared a dream of climbing and skiing Everest’s direct North Face—a feat no one had accomplished.
A new documentary called Everest: The Other Side will hit heaters and IMAX worldwide on Oct. 30 of this year. Check out the trailer below.
The Other Side Trailer
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