On October 15, American ski mountaineer Jim Morrison stood atop Mount Everest. The 50-year-old wasn’t just on the highest point on Earth to enjoy the view; he was there to say a final goodbye, and to make history. Morrison carried the ashes of his late partner, Hilaree Nelson, the famed ski mountaineer who died on Mount Manaslu in 2022.
Morrison spread Nelson’s ashes on Everest’s summit. Then, he fastened a pair of skis and dropped into a harrowing ski descent of the Hornbein Couloir, an infamously steep, narrow chute. When connected to the Japanese Couloir below, it forms a line that plummets nearly 12,000 vertical feet. Morrison previously called the route “the greatest line never skied,” and now, his effort is perhaps the most impressive ski descent of all time.
“I had a little conversation with [Nelson] and felt like I could dedicate the whole day to her,” Morrison told National Geographic. Nelson, one of the world’s leading ski mountaineers, had been killed by an avalanche while the duo were attempting to descend Manaslu.
Located on Mount Everest’s North Face, the Hornbein has captivated mountaineers since Tom Hornbein and Willi Unsoeld made its first ascent in 1963. Morrison’s party was only the sixth to ascend the route, and the first since 1991.
Skiing from Everest is far from a new endeavor: Japan’s Yūichirō Miura succeeded in descending much of the peak on skis back in 1970. A documentary about the feat, The Man Who Skied Down Everest, became the first athletic film to win an Academy Award. Last month, Polish ski mountaineer Andrzej Bargiel skied from the summit down to Everest Base Camp, via the standard Southeast Ridge Route, without supplemental oxygen.
But a ski descent of the Hornbein is another beast entirely. No route is as dizzyingly steep, and the world’s best have eyed it for decades. As Outside reported in 2024, the Hornbein is “a 1,500-vertical-foot gully whose maw opens just 1,000 feet below the peak’s summit, and then spills mercilessly onto the 5,500-foot slope beneath. The narrow gully teeters between 45 and 60 degrees in steepness, bends gently in the middle, and then narrows to about the width of a standing human body.”
If you want to get off the top of Mount Everest as quickly as possible—save for strapping on a wingsuit and leaping off—the Hornbein is the way.
“The conditions were abominable,” Morrison told National Geographic. “It was a mix of survival skiing and actual shredding. Some sections were smooth enough for real turns. Others were rutted and raised four feet up and down, like frozen waves.”
As he made his way through the technical sections of the couloir high on the mountain, including a 650-foot stretch of bare rock that required a rappel, conditions began to improve and the skiing got easier. But that just left Morrison feeling bittersweet.
“I kept thinking, I’m never coming back here,” Morrison said. “I should get a few more turns in while I can.”
For Morrison, the descent seemed to be an exercise in letting go, both of his late partner’s ashes and the shared dream they had of skiing the Hornbein together one day.
“When I finally crossed the bergschrund, I cried,” he added. “I’d risked so much, but I was alive. It felt like a tribute to Hilaree—something she’d be proud of. I really felt her with me, cheering me on.”
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