Climbing
Backcountry
Long before skis ever touched the upper slopes of Pakistan’s Great Trango Tower, the mountain lived in Jim Morrison’s imagination as something almost untouchable—a towering symbol of mountaineering history, not skiing possibility. For decades, the near-20,000-foot granite spire had been a proving ground for elite rock climbers. To Morrison, it represented something deeper: an unfinished idea waiting for someone to see it differently.
“I’d always wanted to check them out,” he said in a phone interview with SnowBrains. “Growing up reading stories about the world’s greatest rock climbers climbing really hard granite at 20,000 feet—I was totally blown away by those ascents.”
His new documentary Trango follows Morrison, Christina “Lusti” Lustenberger, Nick McNutt, and Chantel Astorga as they complete the first ski descent of the iconic Karakoram peak. But the story begins years earlier, when the possibility first surfaced almost by accident.
The expedition took shape after Lustenberger pitched a ski trip to Pakistan. Morrison initially agreed only on one condition: he wanted to trek near the Trango Towers to scout whether a ski line might even exist. From fragments of distant photographs and climbing reports, the idea slowly crystallized.
“From looking at little photos of people climbing on other peaks and seeing the background, we basically pieced together what we thought was the ski line,” he said. “And that was sort of a moment where it all just clicked—we’ve got to go check this out.”
What made the objective unique was not just the altitude or exposure, but the fact that the Trango Towers had never been part of skiing’s imagination at all. “All the pictures of the Trango Towers are just this cathedral of granite faces,” Morrison said. “I don’t think anyone had even thought of skiing there.”
Turning that vision into reality required years of planning and patience. Morrison and Lustenberger spent months coordinating logistics, studying weather patterns, and consulting climbers familiar with the region.
“No one’s really been to that range at that time of year to ski,” he said. “We had to thread the needle—not too cold for the snow to stick, but not too warm either.”
Their first attempt ended short of the summit, halted by conditions. The second expedition demanded another season of preparation and another long wait at base camp. In total, the team spent weeks waiting for the right moment. “When you set an audacious goal and work at it really hard, it’s very satisfying to achieve it,” Morrison said. “When I put my head on my pillow that night, I was supremely satisfied.”
The skiing itself surprised even him.
“I skied from the summit all the way back to the crevasse in one go,” he said. “It took a minute and four seconds. I was going 50 miles an hour at times—full-on shredding.”
Despite the speed and exposure, Morrison said fear plays a precise and deliberate role in his decision-making. “Oh, certainly I feel fear,” he said. “There’s one side of fear that helps me stay sharp and focused and in the zone. The paralyzing side—I just don’t go there.”
For him, the greatest challenge on Trango was not technical risk, but collective resilience—keeping a team motivated through illness, storms, and months of uncertainty. “My biggest fear was not being able to get everyone on the same page to give the mountain a really good try,” he said.
The emotional depth of Morrison’s mountaineering life is also shaped by a profound personal loss. In 2022, his longtime partner, renowned ski mountaineer Hilaree Nelson, died during a descent on Nepal’s Manaslu. That loss still echoes in his most significant achievements—including his historic ski descent of Mount Everest’s North Face in 2022, one of the most technically demanding descents ever completed.
“I spread a little bit of her ashes on the summit,” Morrison said. “I had a really special moment with her up top, and then throughout the descent.”
He described the Everest experience as intensely emotional–not just a professional milestone, but the culmination of a shared dream. “It was really nice to pull that off and come back down and reflect on our lives together,” he said. “I kind of looked at the mountain from that point on with a totally different mindset.”
While Everest remains one of the most technically difficult achievements of his career, Morrison describes Trango differently—less as a singular triumph and more as a testament to perseverance. “I think it’s the most unique adventure I’ve done,” he said. “Probably what sticks with me most is the perseverance—trying over and over for two years and finally pulling it off.”
For Morrison, the meaning lies in the patience, partnership, and the belief that new possibilities still exist even in the most storied landscapes. “It just means a ton to me,” he said. “Hopefully it inspires other people. There are countless adventures out there to be had.”
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The documentary has been screened at festivals and is now being released on video-on-demand and PBS, highlighting cinematic footage of the climb and descent and the intense conditions of the Karakoram.
