KATHMANDU: Mountaineer Jim Morrison hopped left on his skis, sending trickles of snow down a sheer gully on the North Face of Mount Everest, then he hopped to the right, his breath heavy in the oxygen-thin air.
Below him plunged 9,000 feet (2,700 meters) of snow, ice and rock — the most merciless ski run on planet Earth.
It had never been skied, until Morrison did it.
“It was a spectacular four hours of skiing down a horrific snow pack,” Morrison told The Associated Press Tuesday of his historic Oct. 15 run.
Morrison climbed Everest’s notorious North Face through the Hornbein Couloir alongside 10 other mountaineers and documentarian Jimmy Chin, who is co-directing a documentary about Morrison’s run. Chin also filmed Alex Honnold’s ascent of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park without ropes for the documentary “Free Solo.”
This adventure is “the skiing equivalent to free soloing,” said Chin. “If your edge blows out or you slip anywhere on the line, you’re gone. You fall 9,000 feet.”
The ski run starts atop Everest, some 29,000 feet (8,800 meters) above sea level and in the death zone, where people can’t survive for long.
“When it comes to big mountain stuff and climbing, it’s like landing on the moon,” said Jeremy Evans, who wrote a book about the last person to attempt the run from the summit. The young snowboarder, Marco Siffredi, disappeared on its slopes in 2002.
The adventure was dreamed up by Morrison and his life partner, accomplished ski mountaineer Hilaree Nelson. They planned to do it together until her death in 2022 while skiing on the world’s eighth-highest mountain.
From then on, it was a trip Morrison was doing for them both.
At the bottom of their route up Mount Everest, before their four-day climb to the summit, they craned their necks upward.
“We’ve spent an entire lifetime climbing in the big mountains,” said Chin. “I’ve never to this day seen anything that’s more intimidating as a climbing objective.”
Only five people had climbed it before, and nobody had since 1991. While the other, more popular routes up Everest follow a ridgeline, this path up the mountain’s imposing North Face was called the Super Direct route — it’s straight up, and then straight down.
Their 12-person team started, climbing through snowfields, over rock and on patches of ice, facing the possibility of rock falls and avalanches. They had carefully timed their trip in a narrow weather window, seeking enough snow to ski and safe conditions.
At night, they spent hours hacking ridges into the ice and snow that they could squeeze into to sleep, always harnessed to their ropes.
One night, they were huddled on the mountain face as a howling wind rained snow from above and threatened to blow their tent off the mountain, said Chin.
Morrison went to sleep. Chin needed sleep, too, and they’d done all they could to secure themselves to the mountain.
“So I put in my earplugs because I figured if we go get blown off the mountain, I don’t want to know what’s happening,” he said.
The sun came up. As they continued climbing, Morrison assessed the snow that he would be skiing down, and “basically everything I saw looked terrifying. The snow conditions were really, really bad,” he said.
But Morrison kept on, holding Nelson in his mind, and “as I got higher and higher, and further into the death zone, I got closer and closer to her.”
On the summit, the sun was shining. The Himalayan Mountains splayed out around them.
They celebrated together and took selfies. Morrison spread some of Nelson’s ashes.
Then, as Morrison donned his skis and looked over at his teammates, he realized: “’OK, now I’m in a completely different world. I’m on my own.’”
He dropped in, doing controlled hop turns on his skies. The route’s details, which he had studied, imagined, witnessed, read of and dreamed about, took over his mind. He wasn’t thinking of a possible fall, only the next turn. Every breath was a challenge at that altitude.
He’d later text his friends: “the conditions were abominable, and I was able to shred a lot of it.”
At several points, Morrison used the ropes, including where there was only rock, but he relied on them less than he had anticipated.
When he neared the bottom, crossing into safety, he exhaled.
He screamed, and cried and he spoke to Nelson.
The next morning, he walked out and looked up at the towering North Face, he said.
“And I could sort of feel Hilaree’s presence at the very top, the top of the world.”
How mountaineer Jim Morrison made the first skiing descent of Everest’s most dangerous route
https://arab.news/6q8rb
How mountaineer Jim Morrison made the first skiing descent of Everest’s most dangerous route
- Mountaineer Jim Morrison has skied the last un-skied route on Mount Everest
- Mountaineer Jim Morrison has skied the last un-skied route on Mount Everest
Trump awards medals to the Kennedy Center honorees in an Oval Office ceremony
- Trump said they are a group of “incredible people” who represent the “very best in American arts and culture”
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump on Saturday presented the 2025 Kennedy Center honorees with their medals during a ceremony in the Oval Office, hailing the slate of artists he was deeply involved in choosing as “perhaps the most accomplished and renowned class” ever assembled.
This year’s recipients are actor Sylvester Stallone, singers Gloria Gaynor and George Strait, the rock band Kiss and actor-singer Michael Crawford.
Trump said they are a group of “incredible people” who represent the “very best in American arts and culture” and that, “I know most of them and I’ve been a fan of all of them.”
“This is a group of icons whose work and accomplishments have inspired, uplifted and unified millions and millions of Americans,” said a tuxedo-clad Trump. “This is perhaps the most accomplished and renowned class of Kennedy Center Honorees ever assembled.”
Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center
Trump ignored the Kennedy Center and its premier awards program during his first term as president. But the Republican has instituted a series of changes since returning to office in January, most notably ousting its board of trustees and replacing them with GOP supporters who voted him in as chairman of the board.
Trump also has criticized the center’s programming and its physical appearance, and has vowed to overhaul both.
The president placed around each honoree’s neck a new medal that was designed, created and donated by jeweler Tiffany & Co., according to the Kennedy Center and Trump.
It’s a gold disc etched on one side with the Kennedy Center’s image and rainbow colors. The honoree’s name appears on the reverse side with the date of the ceremony. The medallion hangs from a navy blue ribbon and replaces a large rainbow ribbon decorated with three gold plates that rested on the honoree’s shoulders and chest and had been used since the first honors program in 1978.
Trump honors the honorees
Strait, wearing a cowboy hat, was first to receive his medal. When the country singer started to take off the hat, Trump said, “If you want to leave it on, you can. I think we can get it through.” But Strait took it off.
The president said Crawford was a “great star of Broadway” for his lead role in the long-running “Phantom of the Opera.” Of Gaynor, he said, “We have the disco queen, and she was indeed, and nobody did it like Gloria Gaynor.”
Trump was effusive about his friend Stallone, calling him a “wonderful” and “spectacular” person and “one of the true, great movie stars” and “one of the great legends.”
Kiss is an “incredible rock band,” he said.
Songs by honorees Gaynor and Kiss played in the Rose Garden just outside the Oval Office as members of the White House press corps waited nearby for Trump to begin the ceremony.
The president president said in August that he was “about 98 percent involved” in choosing the 2025 honorees when he personally announced them at the Kennedy Center, the first slate chosen under his leadership. The honorees traditionally had been announced by press release.
It was unclear how they were chosen. Before Trump, it fell to a bipartisan selection committee.
“These are among the greatest artists, actors and performers of their generation. The greatest that we’ve seen,” Trump said. “We can hardly imagine the country music phenomena without its king of country, or American disco without its first lady, or Broadway without its phantom — and that was a phantom, let me tell you — or rock and roll without its hottest band in the world, and that’s what they are, or Hollywood without one of its greatest visionaries.”
“Each of you has made an indelible mark on American life and together you have defined entire genres and set new standards for the performing arts,” Trump said.
Trump also attended an annual State Department dinner for the honorees on Saturday. In years past, the honorees received their medallions there but Trump moved the ceremony to the White House.
Trump to host the Kennedy Center Honors
Meanwhile, the glitzy Kennedy Center Honors program and its series of tribute speeches and performances for each recipient is set to be taped on Sunday at the performing arts center for broadcast later in December on CBS and Paramount+. Trump is to attend the program for the first time as president, accompanied by his wife, first lady Melania Trump.
The president said in August that he had agreed to host the show, and he seemed to confirm on Saturday that he would do so, predicting that the broadcast would garner its highest ratings ever as a result. Presidents traditionally attend the program and sit with the honorees in the audience. None has ever served as host.
He said he looked forward to Sunday’s celebration.
“It’s going to be something that I believe, and I’m going to make a prediction: this will be the highest-rated show that they’ve ever done and they’ve gotten some pretty good ratings, but there’s nothing like what’s going to happen tomorrow night,” Trump said.
The president also swiped at late-night TV show host Jimmy Kimmel, whose program was briefly suspended earlier this year by ABC following criticism of his comments related to the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in September.
Kimmel and Trump are sharp critics of each other, with the president regularly deriding Kimmel’s talent as a host. Kimmel has hosted the Primetime Emmy Awards and the Academy Award multiple times.
Trump said he should be able to outdo Kimmel.
“I’ve watched some of the people that host. Jimmy Kimmel was horrible,” Trump said. “If I can’t beat out Jimmy Kimmel in terms of talent, then I don’t think I should be president.”
