Hike up and ski down was Jim Morrison’s relatively straightforward dream, albeit not on your typical ski hill.
Morrison and his partner Hilaree Nelson aspired to summit Mount Everest’s north side, something only five people had ever done. None had ever skied down it. Given the long stream of mountaineers that queue up on the south face, you could call it the most drastic feat ever of avoiding a lift line.
“Everest: The Other Side,” by “Free Solo” filmmakers Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, is the big-screen chronicle of Morrison and Nelson’s mission. Theirs is a quixotic aspiration: climb the world’s highest peak and then coast down.
But “Everest: The Other Side” is as much a document of tragedy and grief as it is one of extreme sport. On a similar expedition in 2022 while biding their time for Everest, Morrison and Nelson — partners in love and adventure — reached the top of a Nepalese mountain. But after just a few turns on her skis, a sheet of snow dislodged underneath Nelson. She died in the avalanche.
Nelson’s death reverberated through the mountaineering world and it reshaped the film Vasarhelyi and Chin were making. In “Free Solo,” which documents Alex Honnold ascending El Capitan in Yosemite without ropes or a harness, the filmmakers had to contemplate the possibility that Honnold might fall to his death.
In “Everest,” that awful possibility comes to pass. Nelson’s fatal fall, as well as Morrison’s recovery of her body two days later, is captured with agonizing IMAX clarity. If “Free Solo” was about an unmitigated triumph, “Everest” wrestles with a darker side of such perilous exploits.
“This movie, the worst happened,” Vasarhelyi says in a brief moment on screen.
Risk tolerance is a common topic for Vasarhelyi and Chin, filmmakers who have intrepidly fused nature documentaries with adventure drama. Chin is himself a decorated climber; he summited and skied down the south face of Everest in 2006.
But in “Everest,” questioning whether it’s worth it is front and center. The movie lingers on the moments when Morrison and his team leave their homes, parting with children for two-month stints during which they’ll risk their lives on desolate peaks on the other side of the world. When Nelson dies, she leaves behind two boys. As the years tick on in the documentary, we watch them grow up without their mother.
Yet within months of her death, Morrison, from his lakeside Tahoe home, resolves to push ahead with the Everest climb. Tragedy isn’t new to him. Years earlier, he lost his wife, Katie, and two children, Wyatt and Hannah, in a plane crash. After first finding a walk down the driveway an insurmountable hike, Morrison resolves to live for them.
So his aim to reach the top of Everest and ski down may be a daredevil feat, but it’s also a grieving, heavy-hearted quest. He describes his yearning to ride down “the raddest ski line in the world.” But what’s compelling him is also something that can’t be easily articulated.
“Everest: The Other Side” is, to a certain extent, alive to these quandaries. The filmmakers even share in them. Chin accompanies Morrison on both an aborted ascent and the successful attempt in 2025.
Deciding to continue with the project is its own debate for Chin and Vasarhelyi. They have two children of their own. Their proximity to extreme expeditions has already brought tragedy close to home. “How many people who have eaten at our dinner table have died?” Vasarhelyi asks him. The couple divorced in 2025, though their separation goes unmentioned in the film.
While these debates are often present in the documentary, “Everest: The Other Side” grows increasingly shy of them. The higher Morrison climbs, the less inquisitive the movie gets. On the first attempted ascent, some of the Sherpas grow wary of the risks involved. Their sensible hesitations don’t put Morrison, handsomely outfitted by his North Face sponsor, in the best light.
By the time Morrison realizes his dream, it feels as though many have, off camera, moved on with their lives. The families back home fall out of the movie. “Everest: The Other Side” becomes a mournful and increasingly solitary march.
Maybe that’s appropriate. Morrison’s extreme compulsion inevitably pulls him away from us, leaving behind a more disquieting film. Even he can’t help but notice while hiking up that the snow conditions he’ll be skiing down are rock hard and terrible. The descent, lasting four hours, is a feat of skill, perseverance and bravery. Even on a bad day, he’d have to grant, the skiing would have been better back home.
“Everest: The Other Side,” a Walt Disney Co. release in theaters Friday, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for thematic material and brief strong language. Running time: 115 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.
