There ain’t no mountain high enough for Jim Morrison, the subject of the latest project from Free Solo’s co-directors Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi (Nyadd, Love +War). Everest: The Other Side follows Jim and his late wife Hilaree Nelson, as they attempt to climb and ski down Mount Everest from the less-frequented and more dangerous North side. Only a handful of people have managed to successfully summit Everest from its steepest face, and nobody has dared take a pair of skis up there with them.

To prepare for their epic ski mission, veteran mountaineers Morrison and Nelson decide to summit and ski down the world’s eighth-tallest mountain: Mount Manaslu. In the lead-up to this trip, Jimmy and Elizabeth, who have known Jim and Hilaree as close friends, document their home life in Telluride, Colorado, where the couple live with Hilaree’s two teenage boys from a previous marriage and their pet dog. They share stories of their love-at-first-sight meeting and footage from dysfunctional family holidays as they try to convince their stroppy kids that climbing mountains is actually fun. Yet, Hilaree’s children aren’t just stroppy; they’re also anxious. Anxious that their mother, who describes her passion for mountaineering as a way of life, might not return home to them.

We laugh along with the family until the documentary takes a dark turn and nightmares become realities. In unbelievable footage from the top of Manaslu, we see Hilaree as the snow slips from under her, sucking her into an avalanche in which she tragically loses her life. Jim, no stranger to loss (having lost his first wife and two young children in a plane crash) slips into depression. We see him return from Nepal alone, and in time realise that part of the grieving process is continuing to live your life to the fullest in honour of the people you’ve lost.

A year after Hilaree’s death, Jim contacts Jimmy, who agrees to resume the project, this time as Jim’s climbing partner. We see them build a team of the very best names in the field, including a determined local Sherpa named Yukta, who literally moves mountains to help Jim achieve his goal. The film documents every nook and cranny of the lonely route up Everest, showing us how incredibly dangerous it will be to make it to the summit climbing from the North side, and how even more dangerous it will be to ski back down. The team face unpredictable weather, sudden avalanches, horrible injuries, and the steepest climb known to man. Detailed accounts of the plans make it very clear that lives could be lost at any moment of the climb. But for the team, nothing is more important than making it to the top.

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The footage, which includes crystal-clear GoPro shots, exhilarating aerial drone cams, and long lens cameras watching the climbers from afar, will have you chewing your fingernails down to the bone. The cameras capture the mountain from all angles, and the filmmakers have managed to stitch their footage together in such a way that creates one of the most immersive visual experiences ever put to screen – you feel like you’re balancing on a knife edge yourself. The whole project looks completely impossible, and the team quickly starts to resemble those little, agile Rocky Mountain goats that seem to be able to defy gravity when scaling vertical cliffs.

Yet, as intense and palpable as the footage gets, Jim’s story has an extremely emotional undercurrent. As we move through the doc, the film begins to question the integrity of leaving the people who love you behind while you place yourself at the mercy of nature. We first feel the weight of this moral quandary in the tears that sting Hilarre’s children’s eyes as they imagine life without her. Yet it is best voiced by filmmaker Chai Vasarhelyi, when she asks her partner to recount all of the people who have sat at their dinner table who have since died – it takes him a while to remember all of their names.

With the weight of the mission and the heart of all those who love them on their shoulders, the team begin their epic quest up to the very top of the world. It’s truly unbelievable, jaw-dropping, never-before-seen stuff. Described best by the climbers, who liken the climb to something close to a religious experience. Up in the clouds, where the air is thin and the sky goes on forever, it seems like the divide between our world and the spiritual world blurs. Jim talks candidly about loss and the grief that moves him to fulfil his insane dreams. He talks about seeing his children on the mountain and the comfort he will find in achieving the dream he and Hilaree started together. For a brief moment, Jim’s impossible determination seems understandable. Of course, the biggest mountain Jim will ever climb is the same one we will all face at some point in our lives – grief. Trying to imagine living in a world without the people you love the most makes the idea of climbing up and skiing down Everest seem pretty damn easy in comparison.

The documentary, showing as part of this year’s London Film Festival, contains some of the most thrilling footage you will ever see. Take the anxiety you felt watching Free Solo, cover it in a sheet of ice and multiply it by ten, and you’ll imagine something close to the way you’ll feel watching this film.

★★★★

Playing at the 2026 BFI London Film Festival on October 10th & 13th / Jim Morrison, Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin, Mikey Schaefer/ Dir: Jimmy Chin, Vasarhelyi / National Geographic Documentary Films / 12A