American Mountaineer Makes History by Skiing Down Mount Everest’s Most Difficult Route
Jim Morrison, 50, completed the historic run on October 15 as a tribute to his late partner, Hilaree Nelson, who died in an avalanche in 2022
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American mountaineer Jim Morrison made history this week when he put on his skis and carefully carved his way down one of Mount Everest’s most treacherous slopes. He is the first person to ski the Hornbein Couloir, a steep, narrow chute on the peak’s North Face, according to National Geographic’s Grayson Schaffer.
Morrison, who is 50, dedicated his historic feat to Hilaree Nelson, his late partner who died in September 2022 on Manaslu, a towering, 26,781-foot peak in Nepal and the eighth-highest mountain on the planet. He spread Nelson’s ashes at Mount Everest’s summit before starting his descent. “I had a little conversation with her and felt like I could dedicate the whole day to her,” Morrison tells National Geographic.
The groundbreaking adventure marked the culmination of years of planning and training. Morrison had attempted to ski the Hornbein Couloir twice before—once in 2023 and again in 2024—but both missions were unsuccessful.
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This year, Morrison spent more than six weeks on Mount Everest, getting acclimated to the high altitude and waiting for an ideal weather window. He was accompanied by 11 other mountaineers, a team that included Sherpas, fixers and a documentary film crew led by Jimmy Chin.
Around 6 a.m. on October 15, Morrison and his companions began their ascent via the Japanese and Hornbein couloirs. They reached Mount Everest’s summit at 12:45 p.m. After posing for a few photos and paying homage to Nelson, most of the team began carefully climbing back down the peak. Meanwhile, Morrison geared up and started skiing.
The trip took him four hours and five minutes. At one point, he reached a spot that was completely devoid of snow and ice, so he had to take off his skis and rappel roughly 650 feet. The conditions were “abominable,” he says.
“It was a mix of survival skiing and actual shredding,” Morrison tells National Geographic. “Some sections were smooth enough for real turns. Others were rutted and raised four feet up and down, like frozen waves.”
He paused for a brief rest at Camp Three, then kept going. When Morrison finally reached Camp One, he wept. “I’d risked so much, but I was alive,” he tells National Geographic. “It felt like a tribute to Hilaree—something she’d be proud of. I really felt her with me, cheering me on.”
Morrison was with Nelson nearly three years ago when she was swept up in an avalanche while skiing down Manaslu. She was 49. Rescuers recovered her body two days later.
Morrison and Nelson were building a home in Telluride, Colorado, and were planning to ski the Hornbein Couloir together when she died.
“There are no words to describe the love for this woman, my life partner, my lover, my best friend and my mountain partner,” Morrison wrote on Instagram after her death. “My loss is indescribable.”
Mountaineers have skied other routes on Mount Everest, but never the Hornbein Couloir. Since it’s located on the mountain’s north side, the Hornbein Couloir is often shaded from the sun. As a result, it remains covered in snow and ice well into the fall.
French snowboarder Marco Siffredi attempted to descend via the couloir in September 2002. But after he dropped into the gully, he was never seen again and his body was never recovered. Other attempts have been made since then, but no one was successful until Morrison.
Quick fact: Where does the Hornbein Couloir’s name come from?
The gully is named after Tom Hornbein, an American mountaineer who, along with Willi Unsoeld, made the first recorded ascent via Mount Everest’s west ridge in 1963.
Even climbing the Hornbein Couloir was a major accomplishment for Morrison and his team. Just a handful of people have ever successfully summited Mount Everest via the gully. “It’s super steep and unrelenting from top to bottom,” Morrison tells National Geographic. “It’s more than a mile long and just massive, dark and beautiful in scale.”
Morrison’s ski run is the focus of an upcoming documentary by Chin and fellow American filmmaker Chai Vasarhelyi. The duo won the 2019 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for Free Solo, about Alex Honnold’s pioneering climb of El Capitan without ropes or safety gear in 2017.
Chin and Vasarhelyi also co-directed Endurance, a 2024 documentary about Ernest Shackleton’s famed 1914 Antarctica expedition featuring historic footage and photos captured by Australian photographer Frank Hurley. Additionally, while filming on Mount Everest last year, Chin was part of the group that discovered the remains of Andrew “Sandy” Irvine, who disappeared in 1924.
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