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MOVIE · 2026
Everest: The Other Side
Ski mountaineers and partners Jim Morrison and Hilaree Nelson set out to climb Mount Everest's direct North Face from the Chinese side and then ski down it, a line no one has ever completed.
Everest: The Other Side comes from Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, the Oscar-winning team behind Free Solo and Meru. It centers on two of the most accomplished ski mountaineers of their generation, who fell in love while pushing each other to the top of their sport. Their partnership grows into one audacious goal: the direct North Face of Everest, which is rarely climbed and has never been skied. Most of the thousands of people who have stood on the summit came up Nepal's southeast ridge. Only a handful have topped out by this harder, more remote route. The film sets up the scale of the challenge early by showing how few climbers have even attempted the face, let alone tried to bring skis along.
The expedition comes together around a seasoned Sherpa team, but even veterans with many Everest summits face unknowns on this side of the mountain. The filmmakers move between the climb and the couple's life away from it, including the strain of leaving children behind and the friends the mountains have already taken from them. Morrison speaks openly about the losses that shaped him and about how the high peaks have helped him carry on. On the face itself the team has to deal with avalanche danger, exposed terrain where a fall is not an option, and injuries that test their resolve. The climb itself is only half the job, because the summit leaves a descent of roughly nine thousand feet on skis. The result is an expedition story and an intimate portrait of what drives two people to chase something that looks impossible.
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NWS staff review.
Oct 30, 2026
3/10I spent nineteen years as an ER nurse in a ski town in Colorado, so I've met more than my share of people who think the rules of gravity are a suggestion. I've also held the hands of their wives in the family room. I say that up front because this movie hit me from both sides, and I walked out of the theater not totally sure whether I'd just watched something beautiful or something I want to argue with. Probably both. First, the obvious. The camera work is unreal. We saw it on the big IMAX screen and twice I physically grabbed the armrest. There's a shot looking straight down the north face where the snow just keeps falling away into nothing, and my stomach went with it. If you have any problem with heights, be warned, because the whole film is basically built to make your palms sweat for two hours. The Free Solo people know exactly how to do that, and they do it again here. The basic idea is Jim Morrison and Hilaree Nelson, two ski mountaineers who are also a couple, deciding to go up Everest the hard way, from the Chinese side, up the steep north face that hardly anyone climbs, and then ski back down it. Nobody's ever done that. Watching the two of them early on, I liked them a lot. They're funny together, they bicker about gear like any married couple bickers about the dishwasher, and you can tell they push each other. Hilaree in particular has this fire in her eyes. She's the real deal, one of the best in the world at this, and the film just shows her doing it rather than making speeches about it. I appreciated that. Then, about half an hour in, the movie drops what happened to her in 2022 on another mountain in Nepal. I won't spell out the details if you somehow don't know, but I'll just say I did not like how it was handled. It plays almost like a plot twist. Up until then the film acts like she's going to be on that summit with him. My husband leaned over and whispered "wait, what?" and that's sort of the problem. It's a real woman and a real loss, and it felt a little bit like they were using it for a gasp. After that the movie turns into something else. It becomes about Jim deciding to go back anyway and finish it. And here's where my nurse brain kicked in hard. We find out he has lost an awful lot of people already, and I mean an awful lot, more than anyone should. He talks about the mountains being how he copes. I believe him. I also kept thinking about her kids, who are in the film, nearly grown, and clearly gutted. One of their interviews wrecked me. And then we cut back to more gorgeous drone footage of a man going right back up into the thing that took their mom. There's also a guide on the Sherpa team who gets badly hurt on the climb. The film shows it, and there's a tense meeting in camp afterward where people actually say out loud that they're scared and what are we doing here, and that was honestly my favorite scene in the movie because it was the only time anybody seemed to ask the question I was asking. Then it moves on pretty quickly and back to the goal. So I'll be fair. If you go in wanting an adventure film about grit and grief and refusing to quit, it delivers. The final stretch is gripping even though you can more or less guess how it ends, and I won't pretend I didn't tear up. Jim is a likable guy, warm and sad at the same time, and he never comes off as a jerk. The Sherpa climbers get real screen time and respect, which isn't always the case in these things. But it's a cheerleader of a movie. It loves its subject. The filmmakers were friends of the couple and you can feel that, which is sweet, but it means the hard questions get a nod and a hug and then the music swells. I wanted one more scene of somebody sitting with the cost. It's a long two hours, too, and the middle sags with a lot of waiting around at camp. On the stuff this site cares about, I didn't see anything to flag. No preaching, no politics, no lecture about climate or anything else squeezed in. A strong, capable woman is in it because she actually was one, not because a studio wanted a box checked. A husband grieving his wife and a family missing their mother. Nothing more agenda-driven than that. It's in English, no subtitles needed except for a few short exchanges with the guides. I'm giving it three and a half. The half star off is for the way they handled Hilaree's story. The rest is for footage I'll never forget and for a man I hope finally gets to rest.