Climbing
The incredible career story of acclaimed climber and filmmaker Jimmy Chin
The director of Meru and Free Solo and Oscar award-winning moviemaker says his film work is only his part-time job. He still thinks of himself as a simple skier and climber at heart.
This winter, with back-to-back expeditions to Patagonia and Antarctica behind him, Jimmy Chin, director, cinematographer and National Geographic photographer and 20 year veteran of The North Face team, blocked out March to be home with his family in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, USA [they live in Wyoming and also in New York City]. There, with his wife Chai Vasarhelyi, with whom he co-produced and co-directed Meru and Free Solo and his kids, Marina and James, he balanced family and work while also getting into the mountains to maintain his mental and physical edge. “I’m backcountry skiing every day but keeping it mellow and safe given the circumstances,” he says.
The husband and wife team discuss the shoot
© National Geographic/Chris Figenshau
How he got into climbing
Chin’s name is synonymous with the world’s best adventure photography. And he’s got there by combining his skills as a top-level big wall climber and ski mountaineer, his appreciation of mentorship, and his self-discipline. But he didn’t earn his 2.6 million followers on Instagram overnight; his career grew over 24 years, starting after college when he hit the road to climb. He eschewed societal norms and lived out of his 1980 Subaru wagon for seven years.
“You don’t appreciate how good a climber he is because you get distracted by the art, which is probably the way he likes it and he pulls that off,” award-winning author Jon Krakauer says in Jimmy Chin’s director reel. “He climbed Everest to photograph and film the ski descent and I think he skied more of it than the people he was filming.”
Climbing history
For his first published photo, in 1999, while bathing in the morning light on the summit of El Capitan after climbing the 3,000-foot monolith, Chin leaned over and captured a shot of his friend Brady Robinson in his sleeping bag. That image started his career as a lensman. Robinson sold the image to clothing manufacturer Mountain Hardwear for US $500; the two split it. Chin was hooked.
Chin capturing the feat from above
© National Geographic/Cheyne Lempe
Expeditions followed, starting in Pakistan’s Karakoram Range in 1999, where Chin, Robinson, Evan Howe and Doug and Jed Workman made the first ascent of the 4,000-foot [1,219m] alpine tower Fathi Brakk. In 2000 he returned to the Karakoram, where Chin, Robinson, Dave Anderson and Steph Davis spent 16 days making the first ascent of Tahir Tower. The following year, the then-North Face climbing team captain, Conrad Anker, met Chin in Yosemite, took him under his wing and in 2001 they attempted the 22,749-foot [6,934m] K7 in Pakistan, but were unsuccessful. From there Chin went to Patagonia, where he tried Cerro Torre, but poor weather kept him from reaching the summit. From Patagonia, he went on an expedition to Mali in West Africa for a North Face-sponsored trip, where he shot photos of his team successfully climbing 2,500-foot [762m] Kaga Tondo, the tallest freestanding desert tower in the world.
The legendary Cerro Torre
© Corey Rich/Red Bull Content Pool
Then came a National Geographic expedition across Tibet’s Chang Tang Plateau to search for the endangered Tibetan antelope called chiru. Chin, who’d never picked up a video camera, worked as cinematographer. The trip included the late photographer Galen Rowell, Anker and writer Rick Ridgway. Ridgway penned the book The Big Open: On Foot Across Tibet’s Chang Tang.
Anker says Chin was instrumental in making the trip a success due to his hard work and also because he knew the local language of Mandarin. “Jimmy helped remove the bureaucratic roadblocks because he knew the language and local customs,” Anker said.
Brush with death on Everest
During his first attempt of Everest in 2002, where he tried to climb and ski the technical 9,000-foot [2,743m] direct north face of the mountain, a serac broke free above the team and Chin was nearly killed when the blowback spat him across a crevasse-filled glacier. The team retreated due to objective danger. In 2004 he succeeded with David Breashears and Ed Viesturs while filming video and shooting stills for a Universal Film about Everest. And in 2006, Chin, Kit DesLauriers, and her husband Rob DesLauriers skied from the summit, becoming the first Americans to complete the feat. Chin returned the next year to make the film The Wildest Dream, a story of Anker and his discovery of George Mallory’s body in 1999. Mallory attempted the mountain in 1924 and was last seen 800 feet [244m] from the summit.
Jimmy Chin ski mountaineering in the Tetons
© Chris Figenshau
Chin’s next brush with death came in 2011, during a ski descent in the Tetons, Wyoming, when a Class 4 avalanche carried him 2,000 feet [610m] down the mountain. “The whole mountain cracked behind me,” he said on Nat Geo Live. The snow grabbed him, pulled him under, threw him over two cliff bands; he resurfaced, then it pulled him down again and pinned him under the mass until he reached the foot of the mountain, where it released him. It took his team 20 minutes to reach him. Before discovering him alive on top of the snow, “My partners Jeremy Jones and Xavier de Le Rue were 100 percent sure I was gone,” he said.
To recover from being crushed and carried under hundreds of tons of snow, he traded the cold Tetons for a balmy surf trip in Mexico. There the warm waters helped him heal from injuries that had pushed his bones to the edge of breaking. “It felt like I’d been run over by a Mack truck – several Mack trucks.”
Climbing accomplishments
Later that year, Chin, Anker and Renan Ozturk completed the Shark’s Fin – 20,700-foot [6,309m] Mount Meru Central, in India’s Garhwal Himalaya – one of the hardest climbs in the world. It was Anker’s third attempt; Ozturk and Chin’s second. The documentary of their ascent, Meru, won the Audience Award at Sundance. It was the highest-earning independent documentary of 2015 and was shortlisted for an Oscar.
Jimmy Chin on the summit push of Meru
© Renan Ozturk
I still think of myself as a skiing and climbing bum. Being a photographer and filmmaker, those are side jobs. I guess you could say I moonlight as a filmmaker
Continuing his slew of expeditions in 2017, Chin traveled to Queen Maud Land, Antarctica, where he and Anker made the first ascent of the 4,000-foot [1,219m] climb, Ulvetanna. “Having been climbing together for 15 years, we have a really good shorthand. It was everything I love about expedition climbing,” Chin said in Men’s Journal.
Anker added, “that was a beautiful climb to be on and to be with him. His sense of calm is one thing. His work ethic is another thing.”
The next year he released Free Solo, the film of Alex Honnold making El Cap’s historic ropeless free ascent. The movie won him and his wife, who co-directed, a BAFTA (British Academy Film and Television Award), an Oscar for Best Documentary and seven Emmys. Outside Magazine calls it “the best climbing film ever made.” It made roughly US $30 million at the box office.
