92 SPORTS ILLUSTRATED
went to broiling. Morrison watched as she began
disrobing. Off came the mittens. The hat. The down
jacket. “KEEP GOING!” she yelled.
So he did. Ten feet. Then he weighed his options.
“She is, I use the words fiercely independent in some
of these situations,” Morrison says. A chivalrous
boyfriend would help in a moment like this; Nelson
hated chivalry.
He decided to wait it out. Within 10 minutes,
Nelson calmed down after what she later deemed
“my hissy fit.” In general, she has come to em-
brace such moments. She hates how male climbers
often pigeonhole women as being “too emotional.”
Maybe, Nelson posits, letting off steam isn’t such
a bad thing: “Perhaps more men should try it.”
Now, masks on, they made for the summit. They
had yet to glimpse the couloir in full, which meant
they still had no idea if they could ski it. It seemed
a crazy notion: climb for a month and not know if
you’ll even be able to achieve your objective. Then,
roughly 500 feet from the top, Morrison exited a
narrow, rocky chute, and there it was, the Dream
Line. Not only was there snow, but a ton of snow.
By now, they could see the summit; they also
knew the final climb was technical, a thin 100-foot
passage through walls that shed ice and rock.
The last time Nelson had been on this stretch
was 2012. That spring, a Czech climber, Milan
Sedláˇcek, preceded her group, climbing solo, with-
out oxygen. What happened during his descent is
so common at extreme altitudes that it has a name:
sitting down to die. You take a quick break, but
that slows the respiratory rate, depriving a body
already on code red. Hypothermia sets in.
Nelson had come across Sedláˇcek’s body in
2012, frozen in its final pose, eyes open, mouth
ajar, garbed in red down jacket, yellow boots and
black beanie. The image haunted her for years.
And she knew he was still here, somewhere, under
the snow, as removing bodies is both costly and
dangerous. Now she feared punching through
with her crampons or ice axe and discovering him.
But she did not punch through. And the weather
held. And half an hour later the six climbers had
made it: the top, a ridge no bigger than a large
canoe, with steep cliffs on either side.
For a few moments they reveled in the tableau
before Morrison and Nelson pulled skis from either
side of their packs and strapped in. (To save time,
they had climbed in ski boots.) Only later would
they realize how close they’d cut it: They summited
at 1:45 p.m. and, as Hilaree wrote in her journal
that night, “Wind picked up at 2:20.”
Finally, the challenge and reward: the descent.
Jim clicked on his GoPro and leaped off the ridge.
The snow felt like a crust of candy. Each breath
was like pulling sand through his throat. He didn’t
care. He connected a jump turn to another jump
turn, then a third, a feat at normal altitude, to
say nothing of 27,000 feet. Nelson followed, and
now each carved giant S-curves into the powder.
They had climbed 4,140 vertical feet in 12 hours.
And now, at a point when most climbers faced a
grueling descent, which can be more dangerous
than the climb, they instead floated down the snow,
which Morrison called “a panel of snow unrelatable
to anything you’ve skied or seen anywhere else.”
Three hours later, they finally hit rock.
And that, they assumed, was that. Then, three
days later, they touched down in a helicopter in
Kathmandu to find a film crew waiting. The world
seemed to care. Not just the adventure world but
the rest of it. Which was all great, but it wasn’t
why they had done it.
WHY? IT’S THE
inescapable question for people like Morrison and
Nelson. Why take such risks? Why climb a moun-
tain’s sheer face without ropes, or cross an ocean
solo, or surf swells that rise like skyscrapers?
Often, people who do not do these things make
assumptions about those who do. That they are
adrenaline junkies or they harbor a death wish.
And sometimes that’s the case. But not always.
Now it is April, half a year after the descent, and
they are in Tahoe together, at Jim’s house on the
lake. Sitting on a couch—Jim lean and cross-legged,
wearing a hat, Hilaree in a T-shirt, veins ridging on
her arms—they look like hummingbirds in forced
repose. At the moment, they are between expedi-
R E A L I T Y
CHECK
The couple’s
competitiveness
was apparent in
a Nepalese tea
room en route to
base camp.
L O V E A ND
LHOTSE
“TO A LARGE DEGREE,
THE MOUNTA INS
SAVED MY LIFE.”
—JIM MORRISON
