“I'm a storyteller, and I'm documenting, and I've always been really interested in stories about the human potential,” said Alpinist Jimmy Chin about his new National Geographic series Edge of the Unknown with Jimmy Chin, premiering September 5th at 9:30/8:30c on Nat Geo. It was a wintry day last February when Jimmy joined his documentary subjects for a virtual press conference at TCA. “I was compelled to tell these stories because I was surrounded by people that I really admired and was truly inspired by, which is the impetus of this series. These friends and peers are truly extraordinary and talented athletes and people who have extraordinary stories, who are performing at the top levels of athleticism. But what drew me to telling these stories is the commitment level. These aren't sports, these are lifestyles. People have to make oftentimes extraordinary sacrifices to be able to do what they do, and also have faced some extraordinary challenges.”
(National Geographic/Teague Wasserman)
Each episode of Edge of the Unknown with Jimmy Chin focuses on a pivotal moment in the lives of ten adventure athletes. Through a mix of archival footage and recent interviews, each persona brings to life a moment that brought them to the edge of what they ever thought possible. “The 12th of December 1992; October 5, 1999; November 16, 2016, all three of those days,” shared professional climber and renowned mountaineer Conrad Anker when asked to recount his most death-defying experience. The last date in that list is the one featured in his episode, an event in which he suffered a heart attack while hanging from the tallest unclimbed peak in the Himalayas. “I should have died but I didn’t, so, phew!”
“The scariest moment pops up when there’s factors that I’m not sure that I am either able to control very well, or if there’s too many variables to logistically manage in an efficient way,” shared big mountain skier Angel Collinson. Angel’s episode recalls a 1,000 foot fall she survived in Alaska. During the press conference, she recalled another time in which she listened to her gut. “The last time that I was the most scared was probably the last time I walked away from a really big line, and it was also the most proud moment of my life. I thought I was going to walk away with a bunch of regret for not doing what I knew was in my capability, and it just wasn’t the day for it, but I was, instead, so scared that day, like so scared, and I listened to it, and who knows? Maybe it saved my life. It was probably this day that I was faced with the biggest consequences of my career, the biggest maybe potential achievement, and I walked away from it, and I am the athlete and person I am today because of it, I think.”
“It’s been a pleasure for so many years seeing [E. Chai Vasarhelyi] and Jimmy’s work and for them to foster this series that highlights the components of what is the edge, finding the edge, and to find the edge you have to overshoot a little bit,” shared big mountain freeride snowboarder Travis Rice. Travis lives in Jackson Hole where Jimmy Chin and his wife Chai live and he occasionally sees the alpinist-turned-filmmaker jogging on mountain trails. “You have to go on both sides of the edge to figure out where that is. There’s no way to never go over the edge. You’ve got to define where the edge is, so you have to play with both sides.”
(National Geographic/Gene Gallerano)
“You just need to be connected to your drive and your motivation,” big wave surfer Justine Dupont added about figuring out where your own edge is. “I feel like I'm still a kid almost because going in the ocean, you're learning, and being open mind of everything that is happening. Me with ocean, it's waves. It's coming, and you need to be in the moment. You need to be really reactive. Working with a team, it's amazing because you need to trust them and then to be confident in your capacity but to be confident with them. It's Something that is really hard in life, to be confident with other people and to really trust them 100%. And then, you need to trust yourself. Me, when I let go of the rope, and when I go on the wave, it's just me.”
Being an adventure athlete is a big risk, but it’s also very rewarding for these thrill-seekers. “It’s those kind of mystical experiences, those transcendent experiences, those experiences of joy that we go into the mountains, and we go seek and explore the edge, because that’s the way that we find those experiences,” concluded Jimmy Chin. “We wanted people to understand what the real stakes are, and the sacrifices people make, and the challenges people face… They make the extraordinary look easy, and it’s not, and sometimes people forget that, and we want to show people what’s really happening behind what you normally see on TV. We want to see the decisions that people have to make, the risks that they’re assessing, how calculated people are. Because only in that way can you understand the mastery of what they’re doing.”
Edge of the Unknown with Jimmy Chin kicks off with a two-night premiere on Monday and Tuesday, September 5th and 6th, at 9:30/8:30c on Nat Geo.