Jim Morrison is a prolific and resilient ski mountaineer. The lifelong adventurer has summited and skied some of the most formidable peaks across the planet, from Everest to Lhotse to India’s Papsura Peak. While he made a name for himself early on as an exceptional athlete, it wasn’t until later that his path truly began to take shape. After a tragic plane crash claimed the lives of his wife and their daughters in 2011, Jim turned to the mountains to heal. What began as an outlet for grief soon became a lifelong pursuit of the world’s most challenging climbs and ski descents. In 2025, Jim completed the first ski descent of Everest’s Hornbein Couloir, dubbed the “most audacious ski run in history,” which will be the subject of an upcoming documentary project directed & produced by Jimmy Chin. And in 2018, Jim and his partner Hilaree Nelson made history by completing the first-ever ski descent from the summit of Lhotse, the world’s fourth-highest peak. That same year, Jim summited both Cho Oyu and Mount Everest in the Himalayas, skiing a combined 11,000 vertical feet between the two mountains. His accomplishments earned him the title of National Geographic’s 2018 Adventurer of the Year. Four years later, he added another achievement to his list: the first-ever ski descent of Great Trango Tower in Pakistan’s Trango massif.
