Expedition Profile: Jimmy Chin
He's an accomplished photographer, filmmaker, climber, and skier, who has racked up first climbing ascents and skiing descents around the world.
ByAndrew Bisharat
December 11, 2017
2 min readJimmy Chin is a photographer, filmmaker, climber, and big-mountain skier. He’s as well known for his first ascent of Meru’s Shark’s Fin alongside Conrad Anker and Renan Ozturk in 2011 as he is for the resulting accolades, like the coveted Sundance Audience Award his 2015 documentary Meru received.
In 2002, Chin secured an assignment to document a trek across Tibet’s Chang Tang plateau for National Geographic, which he calls a breakthrough assignment for his career.
Chin has completed first ascents as a climber and first descents as a skier all around the world, including the first American ski descent of Mount Everest.
His photograph of Alex Honnold free soloing on Half Dome landed on the May 2011 cover of National Geographic. Chin is working on a feature-length film about Honnold’s free solo of El Capitan, slated to be released next year.
Today Chin splits his time between Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and New York City, where he lives with his wife, and two young children.
Jimmy's Stats
- Age: 44
- Years Climbing: 25
- Number of Expeditions: 30+
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