My guest today is someone who endured unimaginable loss and then used that loss to fuel an endeavor that was simply impossible. Jim Morrison became the first person ever to ski down the north face of Everest.
What made you think you could not only get to the top, but then ski down? There was someone missing, your life partner, Hillary Nelson. She was killed in a climbing accident three years earlier. And in 2011, your wife Katie and your two children were killed in a plane crash. How do you recover from that? Are there more mountains to climb, or have you done the thing you came to do?
Hi everybody, and so great to be with you on the Oprah podcast. Whether you're in your car or you're on a walk right now or you're taking a break from work or all the caregiving that's going on in so many people's lives, I understand. I am grateful to be a part of your day wherever you are. And you know, all of us face obstacles in our lives and losses in our lives. None of us are immune from that. If you keep living, it's going to happen at some point where you run into an obstacle or you have some loss. But my guest today is someone who endured unimaginable loss and then used that loss to fuel an endeavor that was just impossible. It was simply impossible. And his life is a lesson that we can all learn from. I'm telling you, whatever you're going through right now, you're going to be so moved, so inspired by the tenacity, by the adventure and the living a fully alive life from my guest today. Even if you see what he accomplished, it is still hard to believe it. Let's watch.
Every year, hundreds of adventure seekers flock to Nepal to attempt to climb the tallest mountain on Earth, Mount Everest Southside. On the north face of Everest, the route known as Hornbein Couloir in Tibet is far more remote and even more challenging. Only five people in the history of the world have successfully climbed what's known as the super direct route. It's a 9,000 ft wall of snow, rock, and ice.
Last year, a group of mountaineers and filmmakers, including Academy Award-winning documentarian Jimmy Chin, successfully completed the notorious holy grail of climbing the Hornbein Couloir. Then one man in that expedition, Jim Morrison, became the first person ever, only human being, to ski down the grueling vertical descent of the North Face. Jimmy Chin and his team, who carried their cameras and gear over this unrelenting terrain, turned their breathtaking footage into a must-see documentary called Everest: The Other Side. This 2-hour film follows Jim Morrison's heart-stopping journey. Everest: The Other Side will play in theaters and IMAX worldwide starting October 30th. National Geographic calls Jim Morrison's incredible feat the most audacious ski run in history.
Well, that it is. Jim Morrison, I'm so happy to have you here in the tea house.
Listen, my eyes start watering and my heart starts palpitating when I look at that because I'm just like a blue level skier. I'm not even trying to ever get to the blacks. So when I look at that, I start to feel... What do you feel when you are looking at that?
A little bit of that. A little bit of hard palpitations. Hard palpitations, but a lot of just... I'm very proud of it. And it was quite a journey, quite an adventure.
You know what it took to do that.
And yeah, that drinking from the cup of life in a very direct way and being really alive and really present and really focused.
So what is actually going through your mind when you're skiing down a sheer cliff of ice on the world's highest mountain? Well, first of all, just you know, moments before you've summited to the highest place on Earth. There is no higher point on Earth than where you were. You and your teammates, right? And while they are taking selfies and Yay! Yay! Yay! And rah-rah cheering, you are preparing to ski down.
I'm preparing to ski down and what's in front of me is very serious and very scary and the conditions are really difficult and I just kind of tuned everything out and got laser focused and took a real lifetime of experience and convinced myself in my doubt that you got this. This is what you're here for. This is your moment. Go do it.
And is there a part of you also that feels in that moment this could be the last moment? You were very much aware that this could be the last moment or not?
I was very much aware that if I made a mistake, I had told my partner Jimmy, if I make a mistake and I fall, I'm just going to relax.
Jimmy the director, correct? Yeah. We're going to talk to Jimmy Chin later because when you're looking at all those magnificent shots, those of you who are not just listening to us but also viewing us here, those magnificent shots will become a movie that you must go see. This movie. And when I first saw just the few clips that I saw and was able to preview, I started to weep because of the majesty of it all. Because I just can't even imagine what it would be like to actually be there, but also to carry that freaking camera on your back and do that. Yeah. And so Jimmy, who you had gone to and asked him at some point years ago to film this, was your partner, and you had said what to Jimmy?
I just told him that if I made a mistake or something didn't go right, I was going to relax because it was the type of condition that if you fall or you lose an edge, you're going to go to the bottom of the mountain in a hurry and it's all going to be over. But at the same time, I knew I could do it and my team knew I could do it. I had everyone around me had a lot of confidence and instilled a lot of confidence in me and...
So, are you just a superhuman? Is there a different way of thinking about life that you have that most of us don't have that drive to do the impossible? I mean, I don't have any of that. I don't have that adrenaline-seeking thing. I mean, like a brisk hike up a mountain is about all I can handle, you know? And so what's inside you that makes you take on a challenge like skiing down the most unforgiving side of Mount Everest? What do you have to have? What do you have? What do you got that we ain't got?
I would argue that you have a lot of it. And you have an extreme amount of tenacity and will and drive and direction in your life and...
For other things. And for me, this was my passion. It feels like who I am and what I'm here for is to do this. That's what I'm good at. I've been dreaming about it and visualizing it and thinking about it my whole life.
So, what made you think you could not only get to the top, but then ski down?
Well, I had an amazing team of really elite Sherpa and climbers from this team from Ecuador that...
I think everybody knows what a Sherpa is by now, but can you explain it?
Yeah, Sherpa is a community that is from Nepal. And they are incredible mountaineers, incredible. They've lived at high altitudes. And these guys and girls that I worked with were just experts at climbing big mountains and what it takes to move equipment and move ropes and get up the mountain and move.
This is what they've been doing all of their lives.
This is what they do. This is their career and they do this for a living and it's also a deep passion for them.
Maybe you're feeling it too. With so many ways to reach each other, it can be easy to mistake being reachable for being truly connected. But I've learned that what many people are longing for is just to be heard, truly heard by another person. That's what we're trying to do here on the Oprah podcast. I see you contemplating and I can see that you're seeing yourself a different way after he said that. Making space for real connection because every time we stop and actually listen to each other, something shifts, something opens. AT&T believes that too. The right connection at the right moment between the right people can change the course of a day, a relationship, and even a whole life. So the next time you reach for your phone to call someone you love, know that AT&T is with you. Keeping that connection strong because AT&T is there when the connection matters and connecting changes everything.
Okay. So, you were up there with 11 other climbers, but there was someone missing, your life partner, Hillary Nelson, and you all were planning to ski down, but she was killed in a climbing accident three years earlier. So, what did you want people to know about Hillary?
Hillary was an incredible influence on my life and we met climbing a mountain not far from Everest and started to see the world through a similar lens and spent years climbing and skiing and chasing our dreams and she was a passionate mother and a passionate friend and I think she had an incredible influence on her community and young women and men in the ski world as just a real leader of passion and drive and grace and beauty and...
And you all had been together as skiing partners and partners for how long?
For seven years. And you'd been doing this and going on these great life adventures and you were skiing three years prior and I didn't understand, did she activate the avalanche or the avalanche had already started and she was overcome by the avalanche?
Yeah, she started skiing and she started a very small avalanche like the size of this room we're in. And just a small pocket of snow broke free and she was swept off her feet and had a...
I was. She was just above me and slid right by me and the snow actually hit me and I sort of skied out of it and stopped and just spent hours trying to get down to her and help her and find her. And I just was convinced she was okay and she needed help. And that turned into me skiing off the other... We were at 26,000 ft when this happened. So we were at extreme altitude and I skied off the other side of the mountain and got a helicopter and tried to go look for her and find her and rescue her and eventually I found her two days later. And she had been killed in the fall.
And my whole world closed again and I was devastated and I was really grateful to have found her but it sort of started this journey of grief and loss for the second time in my life losing my...
So let's go back to the first time in your life. So, you grew up on a mountain and you grew up being really connected to nature and were you like a hiking, skiing young boy? Was your family adventurous?
Yeah, I grew up in Walnut Creek, California. And my parents were very interested in getting us outside. My mom certainly just pushed my brother and I outside and didn't want us to spend too much time inside. And we had a VW bus, a Volkswagen van, and we drove around in that and camped in it and traveled across the country in it and just from a young age, nature was a big part of my life and a really important part. And then I just got excited about skiing and started from a really young age went to my parents and said, 'I'm going to be a skier.' And they said, 'Okay, well, how are you going to do that? How are you going to make money?' And I said, 'I don't know, but that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to be a skier.'
Wow. And then you met somebody who was the perfect partner.
And then I met Katie. She was from Lexington, Kentucky. She walked onto the Georgetown basketball team. She was from a completely different world. And she knocked my socks off and I pivoted 180 degrees and really just fell in love with her and got married and started a family and started a business.
And what was your business?
That's a construction business and like tile building. So homes.
I'm asking because you got married, had a business and say, 'Okay, I'm going to put some of that... I'm going to put that skiing thing aside.'
Yeah. And I didn't ever turn it off, but I certainly did a lot less of it and was driving to the ski hill on a really good day after it snowed and turned the car around and went back to the office because I became really passionate about my work like I was passionate about skiing and just had a different lifestyle.
And then in 2011, your wife Katie and your two children, six-year-old Wyatt and 5-year-old Hannah, were killed in a plane crash. Can you share what was going on, what had happened, and how you found out?
They were in Los Angeles visiting a friend and flying to Las Vegas to be with a friend of Katie's whose husband was going through some chemotherapy and cancer treatment. And she was flying the plane. She was a pilot and she was with both of our children and the plane crashed. And at that moment I was skiing and got in an accident and hurt myself pretty badly. Hurt my ankle and I was calling her looking for her help.
Trying to figure out what I should do. It's what you do. You call your partner. And she didn't answer. And so I started to look for her and figure out where she was. And I called the person that she was supposed to meet at the airport and they said she never showed up. And I called the FAA, which is kind of like calling the police on your partner. And I just had a... I was really concerned about...
At that time, you're not even thinking about your injury. You're thinking about what has happened to my family.
37-year-old Katie Morrison was an experienced licensed private pilot. She was working on her commercial license and had recently completed her first Angel Flight to transport patients. On March 20th, 2011, Katie along with her six-year-old son Wyatt and her 5-year-old daughter Hannah took off in a single-engine Cessna from John Wayne Airport headed for Las Vegas. At around 12:40 p.m. that day, witnesses say their plane spiraled out of the sky in a fiery crash outside Barstow, California. Wyatt was a kindergartener. He loved to ski just like his father. Little Hannah was in pre-kindergarten. She liked art and making jewelry and loved riding her bicycle right behind her big brother.
About an hour later, I got a phone call from someone and he was a friend of mine that I had reached out to and he worked in the air traffic control world and he had called some friends in the air traffic control tower and he just said, 'They're gone, Jimmy.' And I couldn't conceive of that. I was like, 'What do you mean? Explain. What do you mean? Where are they?' And I got off the phone and I just was broken. In every capacity, losing your wife and kids, in the same moment, my whole world was gone. And I didn't know if I would just disappear. I just... I remember standing right next to my front door pacing back and forth trying to figure out what happened and got this phone call and thought I might just turn into sand.
And then hour by hour I just started to go to the kitchen sink and drink a glass of water and people came over. My community showed up. People started to come into my house and I had a wonderful community try to support me and keep me afloat and I just lived months and really years of life and shock and disbelief that this has happened.
Yeah, I know. I heard you say once that grief is a blanket. Grief is like a blanket. Like you were meaning you were covered in it.
Yeah. I felt like... and I feel like it's a good metaphor for what grief feels like. It's like it starts just like a big heavy wet blanket that really weighs you down and you feel suffocated by. And over time, I've learned to crawl out from under the blanket and dry it up and fold it up and carry it with me. It's not something that you move past or take off of you or get rid of. It becomes part of you and something you carry with you. And it's not something I think I'll ever move past in my lifetime.
You don't move past it. But have you found that the blanket gets lighter?
Yeah. You dry it out. And maybe it doesn't just get lighter, but you get used to carrying it. And I walk uphill a lot often with a backpack and I just feel like that blanket is just... it's always with me and I don't want to get rid of it. It's my connection to them and it's my tie to them and I want to talk about them every day and I want to commiserate with them every day and I want to live my life in their honor every day and it's not something I want to leave behind.
And so do you feel that you do commiserate with them?
I do. Often I have moments where I see beauty in the world and I think about them and I talk to them once in a while and I spent many many years waiting for them to come visit me, waiting for flowers to be on the table when I came home, waiting for the light to turn on and have some divine intervention and was just a little upset, or a lot upset, at when was this going to happen. And I think over time I just started to accept that they're in a good place and a different form. And they've... you know, I strongly believe that they, particularly my children, somehow served their purpose here with us and are in a different form in a different place.
I heard that they spoke to you when you were on top of the mountain. Tell me about that.
Yeah. So, seven years after this accident, I climbed Mount Everest for the first time. And just before I left on the trip, Hillary asked me, 'When you're up there really high, what do you think about the netherworld?' Something like that. And what she meant is when you're in this extreme environment with very little oxygen, you almost feel like you can reach into this other dimension.
Tell us, what do you mean by the other dimension?
Like a place where we aren't meant to stay and maybe a place where... the other side of our reality. I guess it's a sort of a metaphor for if you were to go over the other side of the ridge, you're not going to come back. You're going to perish over there. You have to stay very focused on what's in front of you and take care of yourself.
But I turned to Hillary and I said, 'I don't know. That's a really good question.' And she had been up there before. She'd been to the top of Everest and to the top of Lhotse, which is a neighboring mountain.
So this was your what? This was the first... This was your first trip.
I had climbed another 8,000 meter peak called Cho Oyu, not far from there. And I'd been on Makalu with her a few years earlier, but I didn't make it to the summit. We were turned around on our attempt. And so, as I'm climbing on summit day, I'm ahead of my team. I'm by myself. And I have this visitation from my children. This thing that I'd been staring out into the ocean waiting for or being on a river hoping they would appear out of the forest on the other side of the river and just give me a sign that they were okay. And for the first time after this conversation with Hillary, I had this moment where I felt like they were with me and they were cheering me on and I laughed and I cried and it lasted for like 30 minutes. It was a surreal, wonderful, just invigorating experience where I got a lot of comfort that they were okay and that they wanted me to keep going.
This is while you were still in the climb.
And do you think you physically saw them or did you just feel their energetic...?
I just felt their energetic presence. I didn't physically see them. They didn't actually appear. It wasn't just a vision. It was just an energy that I felt. And it was spectacular and profound for me and something I'd been trying to will into existence for many years.
And it comes when it comes. It comes when it's ready.
And I took all of it and loved it.
And so I'm sure that helped you getting to the top, right?
And so when was the decision that after Hillary passed in 2022, the decision was that you were going to go... I'm sure that grieving process was its own because now it's, as we said earlier in this conversation, this is the second time you lost your wife and children in 2011 and now 11 years later you lose another love of your life, a partner where you thought you guys were just...
Inseparable. Symbiotic. Yeah. Relationship.
And now she's gone. How do you recover from that? I know that you shared with us that you went back. It took several days to find her body and then she was cremated there. There was a ceremony there.
Yeah, we had a ceremony at this wonderful historic temple in Kathmandu and I had an amazing community of support there and a bunch of seven monks that led this service. Her brother flew over. Jimmy Chin was there. A number of my other friends were there. And this process was really profound for me.
The process of the finding and the burial.
The process of the finding was part of it. So when I lost my wife and kids, the coroner told me he didn't think I should come see them. And I almost argued with him and he said, 'Look, I'm not preventing you from doing this. I'm just recommending you don't do this. I don't think this is the last way you should see them.' And I was haunted by those visions that I created and concocted in my own mind for many years.
So do you think it would have been better for you to see it?
Perhaps. And when I lost Hillary, I went through this terrible process of trying to find her. And I dug her out of the snow and the ice. And I physically carried her to the helicopter and then I was very intimate with her body afterwards and took her to this cremation ceremony and then... very intimate with her body.
Meaning you were just around it.
And you know, it was wrapped in this and prepared in this beautiful cloth and it wasn't like we were actually with her physical body but her body was there and it was placed on this fire and it's a real fire with logs and there's these boys tending the fire the whole time and in my personality I'm thinking, okay, I need to manage this, I need to make sure they do it just right. I have all this pressure on my shoulders to perform this in the right way. And at the very end, they move these grasses that they constantly put on top that keep the heat in. And those grasses light on fire for the first time and just disappear in a matter of seconds. And what's left is nothing but ashes. And that moment was so profound for me that she truly was gone. When I found her, I knew her soul wasn't in her body. But now I've taken her body and cremated it and I bring the ashes back home.
And I just had such an ability to take a step forward with that and not be haunted by what happened, where she was, was she okay somehow? I didn't have all those stories that I'd had with my family for 11 years.
You sat there and you witnessed it.
Mhm. And it actually gave me a lot of comfort and understanding of my wife and children as well, and just acceptance that something similar had happened to them.
Well, that's so interesting that you use the word acceptance because that is the last stage of the five stages of grief. Once you get to acceptance, that and only then can you begin to move forward. And I understand too that during this whole, after this whole process, that you read Eckhart Tolle's book, The Power of Now, and that helped you. Tell me how you know Eckhart is a dear friend of mine and I've been preaching Eckhart, teaching Eckhart, living Eckhart, you know, since the early 90s.
Yeah. A very good friend of mine, somebody I looked up to, recommended that I read The Power of Now, and then he asked me if I would listen to it as well, and I did, and I was just fascinated by it, and it had a profound effect on me, and I loved the concept, and I listened to it over and over and over, and then I ended up flying to Vancouver and sitting down with Eckhart and spending time with him and trying to live and understand his teachings and that concept of the past being gone. There's nothing you can do about it. It's over. And the future, I love his saying of nothing has, in his little Yoda voice.
