Ski mountaineers Jimmy Chin and Jim Morrison are going to great lengths – and heights – to spread the word about the National Geographic documentary Everest: The Other Side.
The pair ascended to the top of a 12-story building on the Sunset strip in West Hollywood, CA Friday evening and successfully repelled down the side. The vertical journey took them along the face of a massive advertisement for the feature film, which opened at 551 theatrical locations on Friday, including IMAX screens. The film, directed by Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, shows how Morrison overcame multiple tragedies to achieve the unthinkable – scaling the north side of Mount Everest and then skiing down it, a feat never before accomplished.
“I actually can’t believe how big it is,” Morrison said of the billboard. “It’s huge.”
Watch the video of their descent below.
Morrison had his skis strapped to his back as he repelled, but skiing down a right angle, naturally, wasn’t in the plan.
“It’s definitely too steep,” he told Deadline. “But it does bring back memories [of Everest] looking down at that part of the line and being on a steep place there with Jimmy this time. It was nice to have him right next to me instead of [filming from] so far away.”
Jim Morrison on Mount Everest
National Geogrphic
Oscar winners Vasarahelyi and Chin’s original intent was to document the quest of Morrison and his life partner, elite ski mountaineer Hilaree Nelson, to summit the dangerous north face of Everest and ski down the formidable Hornbein Couloir. But in September 2022, while on a climbing excursion with Morrison to Manaslu in Nepal, Nelson was killed in an avalanche while skiing down the mountainside.
“We were in communication with Jim the whole time” as he grieved, Chin explained during a screening of Everest: The Other Side at the Academy Museum Friday night. “I was with him a lot and we were documenting throughout.”
Morrison went through a period of depression after Nelson’s death but rallied and ultimately decided to try to accomplish what he and Nelson had set out to do. For Vasarhelyi, the filmmaking mission became, “How do you honor a story that just got a lot more painful? And also, how do you support Jim through this journey?”
Jim Morrison climbs the world’s tallest mountain in ‘Everest: The Other Side’
National Geographic/Jimmy Chin
Everest: The Other Side premiered at the Venice Film Festival and then screened at Telluride and Toronto. At Friday night’s Q&A, Morrison shared his reaction to seeing the completed documentary.
“The first time I watched it, [producer] Shannon [Dill] and Jimmy came to my hometown and screened it for me and some really close friends of mine. And there was just a tremendous amount of anxiety and I guess stress in the room and tension,” Morrison recalled. “And when it ended, I went up to Jimmy and I put my arms around him and he was crying and I was crying… And he had a real sense of, ‘What [does he] think, what’s about to happen? Does he like it?’ And I just put my arms around him and I said, ‘I lived it, Jimmy. I lived all of it.’”
Morrison’s unprecedented ski down the north side of Everest took four hours to complete. At any moment, a wrong move could have been fatal. He spoke to the concentration necessary to accomplish the task.
“I’m very focused on putting myself into that space to be sure that I can do it when and if I need to do it,” he said. “I feel very alive when I’m doing that. I feel very connected to the intention of life that I’m living and that I’m living a good life. And for me, it fulfills me. It’s my passion. It’s my drive. It has been since my mom at a very young age pushed me outside and just said, ‘Go outside.’ And I fell in love with nature. And I think there are people that are extraordinarily passionate about their art or their music or going to space — and going to space probably isn’t a really safe endeavor. There’s a whole lot of people that are risking a lot to help that person get to space. But I personally think it’s a good thing for humanity to push the envelope and to strive to do great things and to build great teams to make them happen. And I think it’s valuable and important and I’m really happy that we were able to honor Hilaree in this way by telling the story and achieving the goal and keeping her story alive.”
The repel down the Sunset building, comparatively — that was no sweat.
“Repelling down was a ‘pinch me’ moment,” he said, “but not one I was really afraid of.”
Watch the video of Morrison and Chin’s descent below, as well as an interview we did with them immediately afterwards.
