On October 15, 2025, at the summit of Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth, at 8,849 metres, American ski mountaineer Jim Morrison scattered the ashes of his partner Hilarie Nelson, who died in a fatal accident three years earlier. While attempting to descend 8,163 meter high Manaslu in Nepal on skis, she was caught in a small avalanche near the summit and fell to her death.
After spending a moment at the summit of Everest, Morrison strapped on his skis and began his descent via the North Face’s “supercouloir”, a combination of two steep rock gullies at approximately 50 degrees, filled with snow and ice.
Four hours and five minutes later, Morrison reached the base of the face on the Central Rongbuk Glacier at an altitude of about 6,000 metres. Never before had no one successfully negotiated a descent on skis from the North Face on the Tibetan side of Mount Everest. Only a few people had attempted it.
Tribute to deceased friend
“When I finally crossed the Bergschrund [the crack between the base of the wall and the glacier]I cried. I risked a lot, but I survived,” Morrison told a reporter from her sponsor, National Geographic. “It felt like a tribute to Hillary – something she would have been proud of. I really felt him with me, encouraging me.”
Eleven other climbers accompanied Morrison to the summit via supercooler – presumably with bottled oxygen, otherwise this would have been reported. They included mountain guides from US-based commercial expedition operator Alpenglo Expeditions, experienced Sherpas from Nepal, who secured the climbing route with ropes, and a camera crew led by Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker and mountaineer Jimmy Chin.
extremely difficult and dangerous
Previously, only a few climbers had mastered this route, which was opened by the Japanese in 1980 – the last time 30 years ago. It is very technically demanding and has high avalanche danger. In 2002, Frenchman Marco Siffredi died while attempting snowboarding on it. His body has never been found.
“It was a mixture of survival skiing and actual shredding,” Morrison said after his successful descent. In the so-called Hornbein Couloir – named after Tom Hornbein, who was the first person to climb Everest from the west ridge in 1963 – in the upper reaches of the face, the 50-year-old Morrison once had to unhook his skis and climb down 200 meters to the bare rock below.
“Some sections were quite smooth to the point of being a real turning point,” says Morrison. “Others were tossed up like frozen waves and tossed up and down four feet.”
third attempt
This was Morrison’s third attempt to ski down the nearly 3,000 meter high North Face of Everest. In 2023, Sino-Tibetan authorities granted him permission to climb so late in the autumn that his team ran out of time.
In 2024, the expedition ended prematurely when a Nepali climber was caught in a small avalanche at an altitude of about 8,000 meters and broke his femur after falling on the rope. He was rescued, recovered and was now one of the climbers to reach the summit with Morrison.
During last year’s expedition, the team found the human remains of British climber Andrew Irwin, missing since 1924, at the foot of Everest’s North Face: a foot in a shoe, with a name tag on its sock. Irvine and his companion George Mallory died while attempting to climb Everest for the first time 101 years ago. Mallory’s body was found in 1999.
first descent to the north
The first ski descent on the north side of the Tibetan Mountains was made by Hans Kammerlander of Italy in 1996. He had climbed the normal route via the northeast ridge – without Sherpa support and without bottled oxygen – and descended the same route. However, due to lack of snow, Kammerlander had to remove his skis on several sections.
In 2000, on the Nepalese south side of Everest, Davo Karnikar of Slovenia became the first person to descend to Base Camp entirely on skis via the normal route, after climbing with a breathing mask.
Three weeks earlier, Polish ski mountaineer Andrzej Bargiel had achieved the feat for the first time without bottled oxygen on the Nepalese side of the mountain. However, in climbing he was assisted by several Nepali climbers wearing breathing masks.
This article was originally published in German.
Edited by: Jonathan Harding