American climber speaks out after history-making ski down Mount Everest
For most climbers, summiting Everest is an unfathomable accomplishment, marking the peak of mountain climbing success.
For American climber Jim Morrison, the trek to the top of Mount Everest's north face was only the beginning of his historic journey: On Oct. 15, Morrison became the first person to ski down Everest's most challenging route, the Hornbein Couloir, a narrow and steep gully just over 1,100 feet below the mountain's summit.
"It's very steep, unrelenting, and technically just really challenging the whole way on the way up, so only five people have ever made it up this route," Morrison said in a live interview with "Good Morning America" on Monday.
The feat is the subject of an upcoming National Geographic documentary which is currently in production.
Morrison took on the challenge with renowned filmmaker and mountaineer Jimmy Chin, director of 2018's "Free Solo," which won an Oscar for documenting rock climber Alex Honnold's free solo climb of El Capitan in California's Yosemite National Park.
"We trained for literally years... but we also have a lifetime of experience in the mountains, which this kind of route you can't just train for," Chin said of his and Morrison's Everest quest. "You need to really bring all of your experience with risk assessment and understanding the risks and stakes."
Chin said the pair started the project five years ago, and the climb took three separate attempts to complete.
Morrison said that once he summited Everest, he thought of his late partner Hilaree Nelson, who died during a ski descent on Mount Manaslu in Nepal in 2022.
"As my friends were taking selfies and celebrating being on the summit of the world's highest mountain, I started getting prepared to ski down," said Morrison. "I was in a really calculated, focused place where the consequences were extraordinary, and I had to be very precise and make sure that I didn't make a mistake."
Morrison, 50, accomplished the feat at 7:45 p.m. local time after spending over six weeks on the mountain, according to National Geographic.
The route, a combination of the Hornbein and Japanese Couloirs, began at an incredible height of 29,032 feet.
"You can't make a single mistake -- like a blown edge, or if you slip, you know -- for 9,000 feet," Chin said. So, it's pretty high stakes, high consequence."
He said the descent took about four hours.
Chin said there is only a roughly one-day window each year that allows for conditions to pull off this climb and ski, and those conditions came together on the final day of their permit after five years of working on the project.
"I was just really elated. Had a huge emotional release," Morrison said, recounting his feelings at the end of the descent. "Screamed a lot and cried a lot, and it was really an amazing moment."
Chin and Morrison also discussed how they use fear to inform their decision-making in their risky line of work.
"You have to try to decide what part of that fear is irrational. What part of it's just going to make me scared and not do as good of a job? And what part of it can I channel to focus on what the real risks are?" Morrison said.
Chin added, "I think in our business, you learn to leverage fear, because fear can either serve you or it can debilitate you. So, you really start to learn how to discern between fear that's useful and fear that's not useful."
