A nearly impossible journey to achieve what's never been done before, all caught on film.

Everest has been summited over 13,000 times.

But only five people have ever climbed the direct North Face, and no one in the world has ever skied it.

It's this huge goal of ours, and to do it with somebody that you're in love with, it just felt special.

- Hazardous stuff.

Everest, the other side, follows Jim Morrison and his partner, Hilary Nelson, as they attempt to ski and climb down the North Face of Everest.

It's the most difficult and dangerous route on the mountain.

It's a story of determination and tragedy, all captured by filmmaker Jimmy Chin.

He and Morrison spoke to Hari Sreenivasan about this remarkable project.

- Christian, thanks, Jimmy Chin, Jim Morrison, thanks so much for joining us.

Jim, I wanna start with you.

I mean, this film starts out with what seems to be already an incredibly difficult goal.

It's not just about climbing Mount Everest, but it's to do it on the north face, which just looks like almost a straight wall.

And then you're gonna ski down it.

I mean, only five people in history had, before this trip, had ever even climbed that face of the mountain.

But I think the basic question is what drew you and your partner, Hilary Nelson, to just the idea of even doing this?

Well, I think we both were just drawn to big, beautiful mountains.

And, you know, this is the tallest mountain on planet Earth.

And it just happens to hold an incredible ski line that splits the north face of it, which is typically the big, steep, shadowed face in the Northern Hemisphere.

And after Hillary and I skied a mountain just next to Everest, Lhotse, the fourth highest mountain in the world, in 2018, this was just the one thing that was left that was bigger and badder and scarier.

And so we started to work together to figure out how we could try to do it.

We want to ski the most direct line on the tallest mountain on the planet, the Ruppelt.

It's a lot bigger.

From a skier's standpoint, it's just like, there's the Lhotse Kuar, and then there's, you know, the North Face of Everest.

The North Face of Mount Everest.

It's the ultimate ski run on planet Earth.

Jimmy, you've literally climbed the biggest mountains in the world.

What is so, you know, for somebody who's not a mountaineer, tell us the challenges of climbing the North Face versus the route that we kind of are familiar with, where we see these long lines of people getting to the top.

And I mean, what's so different about it?

- Well, first of all, there's just so much less information and less infrastructure on the South Side.

You know, it's been ascended over 10,000 times, you know, and there's a lot of people being guided up it every single year.

It's very, very familiar.

There's a lot of fixed lines, and there's a lot of people to build that infrastructure on the south side.

The north face, which is, you know, in the northern hemisphere, the colder face, the darker face, 'cause it gets less sun, is this, like you said, it's like a giant 9,000 foot tall wall that starts, you know, the base of the route is at 20,000 feet, almost the height of Denali, you know?

So you're starting at 20,000 feet just to start, and then you have to climb 9,000 vertical feet up to the summit at 29,000 feet.

It's very steep and relentless.

There's a reason why people aren't guided on that route because it's very technical.

Like you pretty much have to be a professional climber to even think about ascending.

- Jim, you know, in this film, we see one of the most tragic things I've ever seen.

And that is in 2022, when you and your partner, Hillary, are climbing, uh, Manaslu, I think, and it's the world's eighth highest mountain.

And we see some of the last moments of her life.

Take us back a few weeks, maybe after when we see you also processing her passing, but then your decision to come back and try this, this goal that the two of you shared, but you know nobody would fault you if you said I don't ever want to see the Himalayas again.

Well certainly in the beginning I wanted to quit.

I didn't know how I would get through the next hour or day of my life.

And I was just totally devastated and broken.

But over time I started to go back outside.

And in the beginning it was my dog that coaxed me to take him out and take him for a walk.

And then he wanted to go a little farther and it had snowed in Telluride, Colorado.

And we went and walked on our skis.

And the mountains just provided so much for me in my lifetime, the beauty of nature and the feeling of being out in wild places.

And as I began to ski again and began to climb in the mountains again, I just had this inner drive to go back and to try to complete this project.

And I really loved the idea of finishing it in her honor and finishing it and remembering her and her legacy.

And this felt like a really honorable way to do that.

- Jim, I can't imagine that kind of loss, but what's striking as people learn in the film is that unfortunately this is not the first time you've had to deal with this.

And I said, wow, how is it possible that in a human brain, the human heart can not just deal and process, but then push yourself to this other place?

And I don't know where that comes from.

- Well, Hari, we were getting to really the why of why I wanted to do this and why I wanted to make this film with Jimmy and why we wanted to tell the story.

And that's just because I felt really drawn to sharing.

You can be through terrible loss and terrible adversity and many of us are gonna confront something really difficult in our lifetime, whether that's loss of a loved one or sickness.

And it's not just about climbing and skiing Mount Everest, it's about overcoming your own Everest and overcoming the things in your life.

And you, even after the worst of circumstances, can begin to put one foot in front of another and build an incredible team, surround yourself with good people, and live your best life and continue on.

And I've chosen to do that to the best of my ability and carry those loved ones, my wife and children and Hillary forward.

And I really appreciate the opportunity to sort of share their stories and keep their story alive and keep them close to my heart.

- Jimmy, tell me about kind of the decision as a filmmaker to include the scene where we see that tragedy play out.

How did you come to the conclusion to say that this should be in the film?

- I thought about it quite a bit.

And I've been around a lot of people who've lost people, family, people that are very close to them, and including Jim, but where they never had a chance to see them.

Like they disappeared after they passed.

And not just in the mountains, you know.

And that haunts people to not know.

And, you know, the big question for me was, if this was me, would I rather have my children see it and know it and not spend the rest of their lives imagining what it was, or would I want them to see it?

And given my experience, that was a decision that was pretty clear to me.

And because that was the hard question because Hillary's boys were gonna see it, her family would see it.

And we screened it for the boys and Hillary's family before we really kind of took the film out.

And they understood why.

It was really cathartic for them.

And to know what happened and to not have to imagine over and over.

It's like it's like they could close that box.

And I think it's hard to see, but a lot of things are hard up front, but in the longterm, it's what's best.

And I did believe that that was the case here.

- Jim, we see in the film, we see these young boys turning into young men just in the matter of the years that it's taken to make this film.

And we see images of them watching their mom on screen.

And there's a quote in there, she says, "I know that that's not convenient or great for the people around me."

She's talking about Everest and climbing.

"But I just, I can't let go of it.

Do better, be stronger, try harder, go faster.

It isn't that vastly significant, you know, who cares?

But it means the world to me to see if I can do it.

And I wonder now, as these boys have grown up, and the fact that this document exists of their mom, how has that affected them?

- Yeah, I think that the boys are tremendously proud of Hillary and really, really proud of mom.

And one thing that she just wanted to instill in them was to have a passion.

And it wasn't super important what it was, but she was really driven to have that passion as a compass in her life and something to guide her through the ups and downs that we all go through, through life.

that is clear and present to her children in a sort of magnificent way with mom, but mom not being here is really, really hard.

And I think they have wrestled and will continue to wrestle with the decisions that she made and wish that she was still here.

- Jimmy, you and I have talked about these kind of trade-offs and what is the line and what you're willing to do.

And, but this is the first time we're kind of seeing, you know, little glimpses of the conversations that happen in your own family.

And there's this really kind of poignant scene where Chai is asking you, your partner and filmmaker, and it's telling you, "Hey, how many times, how many people have eaten at our dinner table who have died?"

And you had to pause to think about it because there's actually more than one, and that would be scary for anybody.

What did you want audiences to understand about these trade-offs?

What would you tell people on how you make these decisions?

I mean, I think we're looking at one of the great paradoxes of life, right?

You know, it's like, what are you willing to risk to pursue your dreams?

What is the cost if, you know, you risk too much?

And it's really impossible to reconcile when things go wrong.

When things go right, people say, "That was amazing.

You've inspired all these people.

You've got someone that's really pushed the human potential, expanded our understanding of the human experience, and yet there's still extraordinary risk."

So I don't know how you justify it.

If something does go wrong and they don't come back, is it justifiable to do that?

'Cause there's this idea, you know, in my line of work and in many lines of work, the sense of exploration, of doing things that nobody's ever done before.

That's an instinct I think a lot of people have, whether it's a scientist or a doctor or an artist or a writer, you know, there's this instinct to kind of push the edge of what's been done before.

to quell that instinct?

It's very personal.

I think it's a personal decision.

I think what's, for me, interesting is when people don't consider that maybe people who've chosen these occupations have actually thought really deeply about it.

(indistinct radio chatter) (dramatic music) - These are the worst snow conditions I've ever seen in my life.

Jim, I mean, just the physical strain, like I think putting in the kind of wear and tear that your legs have gone through just to get up would be brutal on most human beings.

But then skiing down some of these incredibly steep faces on very suboptimal conditions, there was just huge chunks of crunchy ice that we could hear, and you're, you know, flipping side to side.

And I'm just thinking, how is he physically able to do this?

Because that was, it wasn't like a 10-minute zip line down.

I mean, this was three, four hours that you were going downhill.

Yeah, it took a little over four hours to get down.

And I think it's important to note that I built an incredible team to help me get up.

And I didn't do that just to achieve it.

I did it also so that I could get to the top physically in a place where I could still put my skis on and still ski down.

I put a tremendous amount of time and effort into training for this and really trained for it my entire life.

And then I got to the dream run of my lifetime, the hardest, steepest, scariest, most consequential, maybe the most difficult conditions of any ski run I've ever made.

And it was my one and only opportunity to achieve this.

And as I skied down, I just took one turn at a time.

I focused on what was right in front of me.

And I didn't think about, oh, this is what is a thousand feet below me.

I thought about what was right in front of me.

And I relished the opportunity that I was doing it.

And I tried to make every turn count, tried to link as many turns together and really have the run of my life.

And then I crossed the Berkshire on at the bottom and I too was just in awe and astonished that I was still standing.

There's a section where Hillary says in the film, and why I keep coming back to these high altitude mountains is because it feels like you're so close to whatever it is that separates, not particularly religious, but our spiritual world from our physical world.

You can almost reach through to the other side.

And Jim, we hear about the previous tragedy that you experienced in your life where you lost your wife and kids in a plane crash years ago.

And you said that, you know, there's something magical that sort of happened to you in previous trips.

And I wonder what you experienced on this trip as well.

Yeah, I mean, Hillary and I spoke a lot about that other side.

And when you're when you're up there above 8000 meters, you're in such an ethereal space, it feels as if you could almost reach through to the other side.

And it certainly feels like if you sat down and you relaxed and you let your heart rate slow down, and you slowed your breathing down that you might never get back up.

And if you make a mistake, you're, you're not going to make it.

And there's something that has brought us closer to that spiritual sort of alternate part of our universe.

And as I climbed to the summit, focused on the task, focused on my team, focused on what we were doing.

As I stepped onto the summit, I looked off into Nepal and I looked at these mountains that I'd climbed with Hillary and spent months of my life on.

I just had a and overwhelming feeling of her support, feeling like she was there watching us, feeling like she was really proud of the fact that we had kept going and we pushed through all the adversity to achieve this so that the title gives a look at the other side of the mountain and the other side of mortality and the other side of life and Maybe the other side of you know, what what we're all willing to do Jim Morrison and Jimmy Chin, thank you both for joining us.

Thank you.

Have a nice day.