In the death zone above 26,000 feet, oxygen is a luxury. At that height, the air holds barely a third of what we breathe at sea level. So when Jim Morrison clicked into his bindings at the cruising altitude of a passenger jet, a cough or two feels almost human.
On October 15, 2025, after summitting Everest, the 50-year-old American made history with the first-ever descent of the North Face’s Hornbein Couloir, a hostile ribbon of ice once deemed impossible to ski. The teaser clip viewed by millions – complete with the sound of his labored breathing – includes a harrowing taste of where’s-he-going-next? hop turns as he threads his way down the 50-degree chute and rappels 650 feet down part of a sheer, impassable face.
Equal parts mastery and memorial, Morrison scattered some of the ashes of his late partner, Hilaree Nelson, on the summit before dropping in for the four-hour descent. The staggering feat, filmed for an upcoming National Geographic documentary, was captured by a team that includes the ever-intrepid climber and filmmaker Jimmy Chin.
Meanwhile, just weeks earlier, Polish skier Andrzej Bargiel pulled off an equally audacious first: a ski descent from the summit of Everest to Base Camp without supplemental oxygen. More than 11,000 vertical feet of exposure, collapsing ice ladders, and the moving crevasse fields of the Khumbu Icefall – without fixed ropes, safety lines, or extra O2. Skis or no skis, fewer than 200 of the 6,000 souls who’ve made it to the summit have done so unbottled. Bargiel’s resume reads like a mountaineer’s fever dream: the only person to ski from the top of every Karakoram 8,000-meter peak, including K2. Two for the books.
