Jimmy Chin’s talents seemingly know no bounds. His adventurous career makes a mockery of the perception that you have to focus entirely on one pursuit in order to master it. Where Chin is concerned, it’s a case of Jack of all trades – master of all trades. He’s an individual who commands the respect of both America’s greatest mountaineers and climbers, while he’s also responsible for bringing us some of the most spectacular climbing films the world has ever seen.
Chin is probably most famous for Free Solo, the documentary film that captured Alex Honnold’s quest to climb El Capitan without protection. Working alongside his wife Elizabeth Chai-Vasarhelyi to create the 2018, Oscar-winning phenomenon, he directed, produced, captured footage for and co-starred in the film, and had previously done the same for 2015’s critically acclaimed Meru. However, as is obvious from his own climbing exploits in Meru, filmmaking is just one of Chin’s fortes.
This is a man who’s skied from the summit of Everest, been part of the North Face’s Athlete team for more than 20 years, written bestselling books, and been on adventures in places as far flung as Antarctica, the Karakorum, Borneo, Tibet, Mali and Baffin Island. Oh, and in 2024, he discovered the remains of Sandy Irvine, George Mallory’s climbing partner from the fateful 1924 Everest expedition.
Here we delve deeper into Chin’s remarkable career, detailing the highlights and revealing more about one of the adventure world’s most multi-talented individuals.
Early exploits and an introduction to film
Jimmy Chin was born in Mankato, Minnesota in 1973 to Chinese parents, both of whom worked as librarians. After graduating from Carleton College in 1996, he became something of a climbing and skiing nomad, living in a 1980 Subaru Loyale and chasing conditions between places like Yosemite, Red Rocks, Bozeman and Jackson. This seven-year period was the foundation for his adventures to come.
In 1999, he sold his first adventure photo to Mountain Hardwear and undertook his first forays into the Greater Ranges, completing a duo of big wall climbs in Pakistan’s Charakusa Valley. Further climbs followed, including a first ascent of 3,500-foot Tahir Tower in India’s Kondus Valley in 2000 and new routes on Mali’s Hand of Fatima, the world’s greatest freestanding sandstone tower, in 2001. In the same year he became part of the North Face Athlete team and teamed up with Conrad Anker and Brady Robinson to attempt an ascent of the Karakorum’s K7, only to be trapped on a portaledge for five days by a storm.
Circumstance played into Chin’s hands when, in 2002, he was invited by Anker to join a 300-mile trek across Tibet’s remote Chang Tang Plateau, along with photographer Galen Rowell, Rick Ridgeway and film director David Breashears. Rowell would go on to become Chin’s mentor, while Breashears was unable to make the expedition. In his stead, Chin was handed the role of cinematographer, despite having no experience with a film camera. The rest, as they say, is history. National Geographic, impressed with his work, awarded Chin an Emerging Explorer grant.
Everest adventures, the Himalayas and beyond
Over the next few years, Chin would enjoy some remarkable adventures on Everest and on other mountains in the Greater Ranges. In 2003, he and Stephen Koch were almost killed in an avalanche while trying to take on an alpine-style, direct line up Everest’s immense North Face.
The next year, he was back on Everest and reached the summit alongside Ed Viesturs, another American mountaineering legend, while shooting scenes for the 2015 feature film Everest. In 2005, he joined Viesturs again, first on Cho Oyu, where Chin suffered a cerebral edema due to the high altitude and had to retreat before the summit bid. Nonetheless, he recovered to accompany and photograph Viesturs on the top of Annapurna. This summit marked the end of Viesturs’ quest to ascend all fourteen 8,000-meter (26,242ft) peaks, the first American to do so and all without supplementary oxygen, emulating the great Reinhold Messner.
Perhaps Chin’s most remarkable Everest adventure was in 2006, when he and wife-and-husband Kit and Rob DesLauriers became the first Americans to ski from its top. Kit had successfully completed her incredible project to ski from the summits of the world’s Seven Summits.
Chin also enjoyed several climbing adventures alongside Alex Honnold and Mark Synnott during this period, notably in 2009 when they were mugged at knifepoint in Chad’s Ennedi Desert. In 2010, he took the iconic shot of Alex Honnold on Half Dome’s Thank God Ledge, which featured on the cover of both an issue of National Geographic and Honnold’s Alone on the Wall book.
Meru
A long-time project of American mountaineering legend Conrad Anker was Meru’s Shark’s Fin, a stunning big wall climb on a blade of granite in India’s Garwhal Himalaya. Anker first attempted the route in 2003 with fellow mountaineers Doug Chabot and Bruce Miller and was back in 2008. This time, he’d recruited Chin and climber Renan Ozturk to take on this much-coveted climb. The trio formed a formidable team but severe weather curtailed their attempt after 19 days on the wall, just two pitches beneath the glittering prize of the summit.
By the time the team returned to the mountain in 2011, the situation was less than ideal. Chin had narrowly escaped death in an avalanche while skiing in the Grand Tetons, while Oztruk had suffered skull and spine injuries in his own skiing accident. However, against all the odds, and having dealt with Ozturk suffering to a mini stroke high on the face, the trio made it to the summit.
The resulting 2015 film, directed by Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi, who he married in 2013, was a great success. It became the year’s highest grossing independent documentary, won an audience award at the Sundance Film Festival and garnered critical acclaim. However, the husband-and-wife team’s next film would propel them to much greater renown.
Free Solo
In terms of filmmaking, Chin’s greatest achievement is undoubtedly 2018's Free Solo. Not only did he direct and produce the film alongside Chai Vasarhelyi, he also featured prominently in the narrative. The documentary followed Alex Honnold’s journey on his way to to free soloing El Capitan in 2017. A monumental success, it went on to gross more than $28 million worldwide, capture the imagination of people way beyond climbing circles and win dozens of awards, including both the Oscar and the BAFTA for Best Documentary.
Part of the intrigue that makes Free Solo so riveting is the internal struggles that those around Honnold, including the filmmakers themselves, go through as he squares up to the incredibly dangerous task of free soloing El Cap. This makes it a very post-modern production, in that it turns the camera on itself, exploring the ethics behind filming the risky business of someone performing on the very edge.
The fact that Chin is one of the leading cast members, shows how self-aware the production was. In the film, Chin even admits: "It’s hard not to imagine your friend falling through the frame to his death." However, the team behind the film thought "very, very carefully" before deciding to go ahead and document Honnold’s exploits.
More adventures and creative exploits
Often tasked with capturing stunning photographs and film, Chin’s talents have taken him around the world with some of the adventure world’s elite. From deep water soloing along Oman’s Musandam Peninsula with the likes of Ozturk, Synnott, Hazel Findlay and Mike Shaefer in 2013, to pulling off a 4,000ft (1,212m) big wall climb alongside Anker on the sensational rock fang of Ulvetanna in Antarctica’s Queen Maud Land in 2017.
Chin’s 2021 photography book There and Back was an immediate success, quickly becoming a New York Times bestseller. In the same year, he and Chai Vasarhelyi released The Rescue, which documented the 2018 Tham Luang cave rescue of twelve members of the youth football team and their coach in Northern Thailand.
Their first scripted film, Nyad, premiered in 2023 and tells the tale of Diana Nyad's swim from Havana, Cuba to Key West, Florida at the age of 64. More recently, the duo co-directed the 2024 documentary Endurance, telling the story of Ernest Shackleton’s great Trans-Antarctic expedition and the discovery of the ship in 2022.
Sandy Irvine’s boot
In September 2024, Chin made a startling discovery on the Central Rongbuk Glacier in the shadow of Everest’s mighty north face. He was there as part of a National Geographic documentary team and was searching the icy expanse along with fellow climbing filmmakers Erich Roepke and Mark Fisher, when they caught sight of a boot. This was no modern mountaineering boot but a remnant of a golden, ancient era of exploration. The boot belonged to Andrew ‘Sandy’ Irvine, George Mallory’s climbing partner from the fateful 1924 expedition, 100 years ago.
On June 8, 1924, Mallory and Irvine were heading along the Northeast Ridge towards the summit of Everest, somewhere in the vicinity of the First Step. Cloud obscured the watching expedition member Noel Odell’s view and the pair were never seen alive again. Whether or not they’d made it to Everest’s summit is mountaineering’s most enduring mystery. If they had, they’d have been the first in history, as it’d be 29 years before Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay achieved the official first ascent, on May 29, 1953.
Irvine’s ice axe was found just below the First Step but no evidence of the pair’s fate was unearthed until Conrad Anker discovered Mallory’s body in 1999. Clues suggested that Irvine and Mallory had been tied together and taken a fatal fall.
Chin’s discovery failed to comprehensively solve the mystery, though it’s thought the the Kodak Vest Pocket Camera that Irvine had been carrying may be hidden somewhere nearby. However, Chin and his team have refused to share the exact location of their discovery to discourage trophy hunters.
