Tonight's Movie: Everest: The Other Side (2026)

I've been interested in Mount Everest for roughly three decades now. I've read numerous books on the topic, including the 1997 classic INTO THIN AIR, and over the years I've also seen a number of documentaries.

Needless to say, when I saw a poster for EVEREST: THE OTHER SIDE (2026) at my local theater I was intrigued and made plans to see it despite knowing little about it in advance.

EVEREST: THE OTHER SIDE is a National Geographic documentary about climbers Jim Morrison and Hilaree Nelson, whose goal was to summit Mount Everest from what's described as the "direct North Face" on the Chinese side of the mountain -- after which they planned to ski back down.

Only a handful of climbers have ever summited Everest from that approach, and no one had ever skiied back down.

Before going on I'll interject that I'm going to cover the documentary's main events, so anyone wishing to see it "cold" should stop reading here and return after catching the movie.

Morrison and Nelson were also life partners. As their stories are recounted, we learn Morrison had lost his wife and two children in a small plane crash, while Nelson was a divorced mother of two young sons.

Early on in the documentary, in a shocking moment which took place on camera in 2022, Nelson is swept away in a small avalance on Mount Manuslu in Nepal, the eighth-highest mountain in the world. She did not survive.

Obviously mountaineering is inherently dangerous, but I didn't realize that one of the lead personas in the film would die early on, essentially on camera, and I suspect this is the main reason for a PG-13 rating.

Following dealing with Nelson's tragic passing, the documentary chronicles Morrison's subsequent attempts to go through with their original plan to summit Everest.

The expedition had to turn back in the fall of 2024, after a Sherpa kwown as "Yukta" broke his leg; he was successfully rescued from high on the mountain, although he tragically would die in a 2026 avalanche in Pakistan. (The film pays tribute to him during the end credits.) Bad weather also added to that year's problems.

A 2025 attempt to summit was successful. I found the "GoPro"-type footage of Morrison's ski trip down absolutely heart-stopping; one wrong move and it would have all been over immediately. Indeed, Morrison said that if things went wrong he planned to just "relax" and go with it, feeling he'd had a full life.

One of the things which has always fascinated me about Everest is the "Why?" question -- why do so many people put their lives on the line to make it to the summit? (And no, not just "Because it's there," as the saying goes.) In this case, it was not even an "ordinary" summit or descent of Everest, which comes with significant risks. The chances of a fatal mistake while executing the north side summit and ski descent were very high.

I do have to say that I found it rather hard to admire Nelson, given that she was willingly leaving her sons at home for months at a time in order to so something so dangerous; she says, in essence, she felt she had to take the risks she took, but in the end it was her choice. Morrison had no dependents due to the tragedy earlier in his life, but Nelson's boys paid the price for her adventurous spirit.

All in all, EVEREST: THE OTHER SIDE is quite an interesting 110 minutes which was directed by Jimmy Chin (seen here with Morrison) and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi; they were the filmmakers behind the excellent documentary THE RESCUE (2021). Chin, a member of the climbing team, was also one of several cinematographers.

There's a sobering scene when, while deciding about a future attempt, Elizabeth asks Jimmy how many climbers who've eaten at their dinner table have died, and it turns out to be quite a long list.

A trailer is here.

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