Everest: The Other Side

An extreme sports doc so pummelling, you may need a huff of oxygen (or a hug) afterwards, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s follow-up to Free Solo is not the Everest climbing documentary you’re expecting. It left me gasping at points, as its protagonists dice with death in ways us sea-level folk can only gaze up at in awe and bafflement.

Of course, people have been (successfully) scaling Everest since 1953. Nothing new there, right? But only five of them have done it from the Chinese side of the mountain rather than the commonly used southeast ridge in Nepal – the formidable North Face route that looks like something you wouldn’t want to fly over, much less climb. Much, much less ski back down. Yet that is the task real-life partners and elite mountain skiers Jim Morrison and Hilaree Nelson set for themselves in 2022. Chin, not only the co-director here but a friend of the couple and their fellow climber, is on hand with a dual-purpose climbing/filmmaking crew to help them achieve their dream of conquering ‘the ultimate ski run on Planet Earth’.

Ahead of them are sudden avalanches, treacherous ice fields, high winds and fatally fickle weather – all captured with stunning cinematography via drone footage, helicopter shots and GoPro cameras. A sudden avalanche yields footage from inside the snow, like some terrifying new virtual reality experience. Widescreen shots of Everest beg the obvious question: how the hell do you begin to ski down that? 

Ahead of them are sudden avalanches, treacherous ice fields and fatally fickle weather 

Chin, Morrison, Nelson and co. know it’s madly dangerous. Their fearless sherpas know it. Back home in Utah, Nelson’s two kids know it. Chin’s partner and co-director Vasarhelyi knows it. She gently encourages him to list all the people who’ve sat at their dinner table and subsequently died on similar expeditions. The list is lengthy. The message is clear. 

Beyond all the extraordinary photography of Himalayan mountain ranges, icy crevasses and plunging couloirs, Everest: The Other Side is a film about how we choose to live our lives and what it means for those we love. Death is ever-present, and the talking-head interviews speak of people wrestling with losses before they’ve even happened. The stakes are so high and so consciously risked, it’s natural to feel a touch judgy as parents leave their children to cling to icy, 9000-foot rock faces. Chin and Vasarhelyi centre these ethical questions, holding themselves and their friends to account, much as they did with free climber Alex Honnold in the Oscar-winning Free Solo.

But their latest extreme NatGeo doc is ultimately a paean to following your path – as well as a heart-in-your-mouth odyssey to the roof of the world. See it on IMAX, don’t Google anything beforehand and wear something warm. 

Everest: The Other Side premiered at the Venice Film Festival. In theaters later this autumn.