Morrison, though, bit off another ambitious Himalayan giant. If anything, his risk tolerance was widening. In May 2024 he joined American alpinist Chantel Astorga and Canadian ski mountaineer Christina Lustenberger to climb and ski Pakistan’s Great Trango Tower, a sheer 20,623-foot tooth of a mountain that appears totally unsuitable for skiing. And yet, somehow they found a line.
The 2024 Everest attempt was cut short by Yukta’s accident and then overshadowed after director Chin and filmmakers Erich Roepke and Mark Fisher discovered the partial remains of lost Everest British explorer Andrew “Sandy” Irvine, who’d been missing for almost exactly 100 years. This year Morrison showed up to Advanced Base Camp with a fine-tuned approach, only months after a serious knee surgery. The team was leaner, with fixing and outfitting organized by Adrian Ballinger of Lake Tahoe–based Alpenglow Expeditions.
“This year I hand selected a team from Phortse of Sherpa that we know,” says Morrison referencing the famed Sherpa village in Nepal’s Everest region that is the home of the Khumbu Climbing School. Yukta, fully healed, has returned. Morrison also enlisted Alpenglow’s top guide, Ecuadorian Esteban “Topo” Mena, 35, to anchor the climbing portion of the expedition. But as with Everest in years past, the climbing was not the only thing the team needed to navigate.
This was Morrison’s third attempt to climb and ski Everest’s north face—and for the 49-year-old, it was the culmination of more than a decade of skiing on the world’s highest peaks, including a 2018 descent of Lhotse (27,940 feet) and a 2017 descent of India’s Papsura Peak (21,165 feet). Savannah Cummins, National Geographic
Shortly after the team arrived on the mountain, Nepal was rocked by nationwide protests and a social media blackout that escalated into violence, toppled the parliamentary government, and disrupted the normal fall trekking high season. Several luxury hotels were torched by mobs. The military imposed curfews and shot dead nearly two dozen protesters. The unrest has rattled guides and outfitters. “Many tourists are canceling due to terrible things happening here and people watching the global news,” says Jiban Ghimire, one of Nepal’s best-known fixers. “More people decided to postpone.”
One person who didn’t was Polish ski-mountaineer Andrzej Bargiel, 37, who made the first ski descent of the regular Southeast Ridge Route without supplemental oxygen. Later that week, also on the mountain’s southside, American ultrarunner Tyler Andrews attempted to break Everest’s speed record without supplemental oxygen. Meanwhile, Morrison, Chin, and company were keeping a low profile on the mountain’s north side, with their base camp tucked into the Central Rongbuk Glacier.
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