By: HISTORY.com Editors
American completes first ski descent of Mount Everest’s North Face
After three attempts in as many years, American ski mountaineer Jim Morrison accomplishes what many considered impossible on October 15, 2025, when he becomes the first person to ski down Mount Everest’s North Face.
At 12:15 p.m., Morrison reaches the 29,032-foot summit of Everest, located in the Himalayas on the border of Nepal and Tibet, via the Hornbein and Japanese couloirs, a notoriously difficult route that few climbers have attempted. He then clips into his skis around 2 p.m. and begins a four-hour, five-minute descent from the highest point in the world to his base camp on the Rongbuk Glacier 9,000 vertical feet below.
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Filmmaker and mountaineer Jimmy Chin, who documented the expedition with his wife, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, for the 2026 film Everest: The Other Side, compared the challenge to rock climbing without a rope or other safety gear. “If your edge blows out or you slip anywhere on the line, you’re gone,” he said. “You fall 9,000 feet.”
Skiing Mount Everest’s North Face had been a goal for Morrison since his teens. Originally, he planned the expedition with his partner, acclaimed ski mountaineer Hilaree Nelson. However, Nelson died in 2022 after a small avalanche swept her off her skis while the couple was skiing down Nepal’s Mount Manaslu. Before starting his Everest descent, Morrison scattered some of her ashes on the mountain’s summit. “I had a little conversation with her and felt like I could dedicate the whole day to her,” he later told National Geographic.
Morrison’s feat came 25 years after Everest’s first successful ski descent from the summit to base camp. Slovenian skier Davo Karničar was the first person to ski from Everest’s summit to base camp in October 2000, descending via the southeast ridge. A year later, France’s Marco Siffredi became the first person to descend Everest’s North Face on a snowboard, traveling through the Norton Couloir. In 2002, he returned to Everest intending to descend the Hornbein Couloir but disappeared during the attempt; his body has not been found. Roughly three weeks before Morrison’s accomplishment, Polish ski mountaineer Andrzej Bargiel also made history when he skied down the mountain without supplemental oxygen via the southeast ridge.
Gear That Powered Hillary and Norgay to the Top of Mount Everest
From boots to sleeping bags, see how equipment that Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay used in the first ascent of Mount Everest compares to what climbers use today.
From boots to sleeping bags, see how equipment that Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay used in the first ascent of Mount Everest compares to what climbers use today.
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Citation Information
- Article Title
- American completes first ski descent of Mount Everest’s North Face
- Author
- HISTORY.com Editors
- Website Name
- History
- Date Accessed
- October 30, 2026
- Publisher
- A&E Television Networks
- Last Updated
- October 30, 2026
- Original Published Date
- October 30, 2026
