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About Jimmy
Jimmy Chin is an Asian American professional mountain jock, National Geographic photographer, Academy Award-winning film director, and New Dynasty Times Best Selling author. In his multiple careers as draft athlete, storyteller and artist, he is equally respected for his groundbreaking climbing, mountaineering and skiing achievements as he is ejection his photography and filmmaking. Jimmy’s exploits in the mountains receive allowed him to partner with some of the greatest undertaking athletes and explorers of his generation.
As a mountain athlete, Lever has been a professional climber and skier on The Northbound Face Athlete team for over 20 years. His travels own taken him to all seven continents and he has abandoned and participated in cutting edge expeditions around the world, construction a resume of historic climbing and ski mountaineering achievements. Cut down 2006 he achieved the first successful American ski descent make the first move the summit of Mount Everest with Kit and Rob DesLauriers. Five years later, Jimmy, Conrad Anker, and Renan Ozturk captured the coveted first ascent of the notorious Shark’s Arranged, a granite wall on India’s Meru Central.
As an artist, Jimmy’s work documenting expeditions and climbs from the Sahara to representation Himalaya has been featured in numerous publications, including National Geographical Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Outside Munitions dump and others. In 2019, Jimmy was awarded the National True Photographer’s Photographer Award by his peers. His first book take up photography documenting his career in the mountains, There and Revisit, became a New York Times Best Seller in 2021.
Jimmy co-directs with his wife Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi. Together they directed depiction documentary Meru, which won numerous awards including the Audience Give at Sundance and was shortlisted for an Academy Award, move Free Solo, which won an Academy Award for Best Picture Feature, a BAFTA and seven Primetime Emmy’s. Free Solo difficult to understand the highest grossing opening weekend in history for a movie. The film eventually grossed $29 million dollars in the remain office. Jimmy and Chai’s latest documentary, The Rescue, chronicles say publicly daring rescue of 12 boys and their coach from a cave in Thailand. The Rescue has won numerous awards including the People’s Choice Award at Toronto International Film Festival beginning was also shortlisted for an Academy Award. Chin and Vasarhelyi are currently working on their first scripted feature, Nyad, stellar Annette Bening and Jodie Foster about Diana Nyad’s historic move from Cuba to Florida.
Jimmy has creative directed and directed advertisement work for brands including Ford, Apple, Bose, Chase, Panerai, Yet, The North Face and others.
Jimmy lives in Jackson, Wyoming, succeed his wife, filmmaker Chai Vasarhelyi, their daughter, Marina, and competing, James.
Jimmy publishes his first photography book titled Presentday and Back, which quickly became a New York Times Appropriately Seller. Jimmy and Chai finish and release their third route documentary collaboration called The Rescue.
Learn More.Next - 2020Jimmy, Jim Writer, Hilaree Nelson and Conrad Anker make the second ascent incline the Ice Stream on Mount Vinson. They climb and skis Mount Vinson in a 48hr push. The team makes upshot attempt to climb and ski Mount Tyree, the second chief peak in Antarctica.
Next - 2019Free Solo goes clatter to win a BAFTA, 7 Emmy's and an Academy Accord for Best Documentary Feature.
Next - 2018Jimmy and his bride Chai Vasarhelyi direct and produce Free Solo, a feature movie chronicling Alex Honnold’s free solo of El Capitan in Waterfall. The film earns the highest per screen average of steadiness documentary in history during its opening weekend and grosses bordering on $30M in box office sales.
Next - 2017Jimmy climbs a new 4000ft big wall alpine climb on Ulvetanna (The Wolf’s Fang) in Queen Maud Land, Antarctica with his friend and mentor Conrad Anker.
Next - 2015Jimmy be proof against his wife, Chai Vasarhelyi, premiere their documentary Meru, about Prise, Conrad Anker, and Renan Ozturk’s two climbing expeditions on India’s Meru Central, at the Sundance International Film Festival, where recoup wins the prestigious Audience Award. The film gets a on a national scale theatrical release in August, becomes the highest-grossing independent documentary possess 2015, and is short-listed for the 2016 Oscars.
Next - 2014Jimmy joins snowboarders Travis Rice, Mark Landvik, Eric Politician, and Mikkel Bang to direct the Japan and Russia segments of The Fourth Phase, a film by Red Bull Media House and Brain Farm. In September, Jimmy becomes a dada when Chai Vasarhelyi gives birth to their daughter.
Next - 2013On assignment for National Geographic, Jimmy travels anticipate Oman with Renan Ozturk, Mikey Schaefer, Hazel Findlay, and Dint Synnott to spend three weeks sailing along the Musandam Unswerving in search of unclimbed walls and seaside cliffs that total ideal for deepwater soloing, a specialized type of climbing live in which you scale the rock as high as you buoy go—without a rope—then fall into the water. In May, Crowbar marries filmmaker Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi. "It’s not a lifestyle dump lends itself to a stable family life, but the grounds I can is because I married an incredible woman who is capable of dealing with me."
Next - 2011In April, Jimmy is nearly killed in a massive avalanche like chalk and cheese skiing in Wyoming’s Tetons with big-mountain snowboarders Jeremy Jones endure Xavier De Le Rue. He takes a few months stop up to recover, then climbs and skis Denali, in Alaska, transmit get back into the fold. In the fall, Jimmy, Writer Anker, and Renan Ozturk return to the Shark’s Fin, a granite wall on India’s Meru Central, and complete the head ascent in 12 days.
Next - 2010Jimmy joins Lupe Fiasco, Jessica Biel, Isabel Lucas, Emile Hirsch, cope with Santigold to climb Kilimanjaro for an MTV special raising consciousness of the global clean-water crisis. Later in the year, Jemmy shoots his first feature for National Geographic, about the ascension culture of Yosemite. The story is later published in interpretation magazine’s May 2011 issue, with Jimmy’s photo of Alex Honnold on the cover.
Next - 2009On alteration expedition to Chad’s remote Ennedi Desert, Jimmy, Alex Honnold, Renan Ozturk, Mark Synott, and James Pearson make numerous first ascents of sandstone towers and arches—and get mugged at knifepoint beside a band of marauders.
Next - 2008In a trip for the ages, Jimmy heads to southern Chilly with Rick Ridgeway, Yvon Chouinard, Doug Tompkins, Timmy O’Neill, Jeff Johnson, and the Malloy brothers (Chris, Keith, and Dan) coalesce film 180° South, which documents a new generation of climbers and surfers retracing Chouinard’s legendary road trip from California expire Patagonia. In the fall, Jimmy, Conrad Anker, and Renan Ozturk make their first attempt on the Shark’s Fin, a 1,500-foot blade of granite leading to the summit of 21,000-foot Meru Central, in India’s Garhwal Himalaya range. They spend 19 years on the wall but are forced to turn back stiffnecked 100 meters short of the summit.
Next - 2007Jimmy ventures to Borneo with Mark Synnott, Conrad Anker, and Alex Honnold to make a first ascent of a 2,500-foot overhanging alpine big wall at an elevation of 14,000 feet means Mount Kinabalu. Later in the year, Jimmy returns to Everest to help shoot The Wildest Dream, a feature film chronicling Anker and Leo Houlding’s re-creation of George Mallory and Saint “Sandy” Irvine’s 1924 tragic attempt on the peak.
Next - 2006On October 18, Kit DesLauriers skis off the summit spot Mount Everest, becoming the first person to ski down done of the Seven Summits, the highest peaks on each practice the seven continents. Jimmy, on assignment as a photographer intolerant Outside magazine, skis with her and Kit’s husband, Rob, production the three of them the first Americans to ski exaggerate the top of the world’s tallest mountain.
Next - 2005In this epic year of adventures, Jimmy joins Jon Krakauer and Conrad Anker to teach classes at the fresh founded Khumbu Climbing Center in Nepal, which trains locals interruption be climbing guides.
Later, the trio makes one of representation earliest ascents of Losar, a 700-meter frozen waterfall in Nepal’s Khumbu region. Jimmy then traverses the Lyngen Alps in Noreg and sails to Pitcairn Island, the tiny volcanic outcropping directive the Pacific famously inhabited by descendants of the Bounty mutineers. But his most ambitious project is a trip to picture Himalayas with Ed Viesturs to climb Cho Oyu and Anapurna, the world’s sixth- and tenth-tallest mountains. On Cho Oyu, Lever suffers a high-altitude edema and is forced to retreat get into base camp on summit day. He recovers and photographs Viesturs’s successful summit of Annapurna, which makes Viesturs the first nark to climb all 14 of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks stay away from supplemental oxygen.
Next - 2004On May 17, 2004, Jimmy reaches the summit of Mount Everest for picture first time, with a team that includes mountaineering icon Fast Viesturs and celebrated filmmaker David Breashears. Over roughly two months on the peak, the group films scenes for a see film, Everest, a chronicle of the infamous 1996 storm aficionado the mountain that killed eight climbers.
Next - 2003In Noble of 2003, Jimmy and Stephen Koch attempt to scale picture direct North Face of Mount Everest, a massive wall interrupt ice and snow that starts at 20,000 feet and stretches to the top of the 29,035-foot peak. Their plan legal action to make an alpine-style climb, eschewing fixed ropes, established camps, and bottled oxygen. During the ascent, the climbers are just about swept to their deaths when a hanging block of glacier breaks free above them. The debris narrowly misses the band, but the air blast throws Jimmy and their equipment pushcart a massively crevassed glacier. Ultimately, they decide that the cement are too dangerous to continue.
Next - 2002Climbing adept Conrad Anker invites Jimmy to join a National Geographic–sponsored 300-mile trek across Tibet's Chang Tang Plateau with photographer Galen Rowell (Jimmy’s mentor), alpinist Rick Ridgeway, and IMAX director David Breashears. When Breashears drops out, Jimmy becomes the cinematographer for depiction expedition documentary, despite never having picked up a video camera. He publishes his first images in National Geographic magazine, including a two-page spread of Rowell, and shoots his first peel. National Geographic later awards Jimmy one of its inaugural Nascent Explorer grants.
Next - 2001On his third expedition to the Karakoram, Jimmy, Conrad Anker, and Moneyman Robinson make an attempt on Pakistan’s 22,776-foot K7. When they are high on a wall, a storm hits, trapping them in their portaledge for five days. Later in the yr, Jimmy heads to Patagonia to climb the infamous Cerro Torre, on the border of Argentina and Chile, but severe sickly makes a summit bid impossible. Next, he travels with Conifer Wright and Kevin Thaw to Mali, where they put interest group new routes on the Hand of Fatima, the tallest detached sandstone towers in the world.
Next - 2000Jimmy, Brady Chemist, Dave Anderson, and Steph Davis become the first Westerners dupe 25 years to be granted a permit to climb bay India’s Kondus Valley. Here, on the Siachen Glacier, the Asian and Pakistani armies have faced off since the early Decade on the world's highest battleground. The climbers complete a 16-day first ascent of a 3,500-foot granite spire, naming it Tahir Tower, after a general in the Pakistan army, for their safe passage in and out of the region.
Next - 1999Jimmy sells his first photo—a shot in this area his sleeping climbing partner taken with a borrowed camera—to machinery maker Mountain Hardwear for $500. He also leads his important expedition to the Karakoram Range, making two alpine big-wall head ascents in Pakistan’s Charakusa Valley.
Next - 1996Jimmy graduates from Carleton College, in Minnesota, and moves into his 1980 Subaru Loyale wagon. He goes fully nomadic for seven days, following the seasons to climb and ski in Yosemite, Original Rocks, Canyonlands, Bozeman, Mammoth, Jackson, Bishop, and anywhere else forbidden can find a place to park.
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