Jimmy Chin’s new book, Rules to Live By, brings together conversations with ten people who have pursued lives on their own terms, including Yvon Chouinard, Yo-Yo Ma, Simone Biles, Alex Honnold and Kris Tompkins. The book is also partly autobiographical, prompting Chin to examine what success means and what ultimately matters.
Chin grew up in Minnesota as the only son in a family with several generations of only sons. His parents, both librarians, encouraged discipline and excellence. He studied violin from the age of three, practiced martial arts and followed a demanding academic routine. The forest, however, became his escape. After discovering climbing in college, he abandoned his planned career path and spent years living out of a car, in a cave at Yosemite’s Camp 4 and in a chicken coop in Jackson.
He described choosing climbing as one of the most difficult decisions of his life, not because of the physical danger but because of the uncertainty surrounding it. While friends pursued graduate studies and conventional careers, Chin endured long periods of doubt and hardship as he tried to build a life around climbing and photography.
That experience eventually led to a career as a filmmaker. Chin directed Free Solo, the Oscar-winning documentary about Alex Honnold, and later made Everest: The Other Side, which follows Jim Morrison and Hilaree Nelson’s attempt to climb and ski down the North Face of Everest.
Chin initially resisted making Free Solo after Honnold told him he was considering climbing El Capitan without ropes. Chin feared that filming the attempt could contribute to Honnold’s death, a responsibility he said he could not accept. He ultimately agreed because he trusted Honnold and knew the climber intended to proceed regardless of whether a film was made.
For the production, Chin established three principles for his crew: they were Honnold’s friends first, climbers before filmmakers, and filmmakers only after considering Honnold’s needs. The film, he said, could never take priority over the climber’s safety.
Chin also rejected the idea that Honnold is immune to fear. Honnold has said he feels fear, and Chin explained that the climber gradually expanded his comfort zone through disciplined preparation. The brain scan featured in Free Solo was left open to interpretation, but Chin said Honnold’s performance was the result of a long-term process rather than proof of superhuman qualities.
The interview also addressed Chin’s continuing involvement in high-risk expeditions despite having children. He acknowledged that there is no easy answer to the question of whether a parent should accept serious danger. After losing friends in the mountains, including Hilaree Nelson, he said he believes children need their parents to be physically alive but also emotionally alive and true to themselves. For Chin, climbing remains a calling.
He described fear as useful when it sharpens the senses, but harmful when it produces panic. His method is to separate perceived risk from actual risk, focus on what can be addressed, create a plan and carry it out.
Chin recalled turning around roughly 100 meters from the summit during an expedition on Meru, despite having invested years in the objective. The team had planned for seven days of food but spent 19 days on the wall, repeatedly reassessing its limits. He said that recognizing when conditions are wrong—and walking away even when the goal is close—requires discipline.
That decision later became the subject of a question from Bill King, a retired command master chief of SEAL Team 6, during a talk Chin gave at an undisclosed military location. Chin said he and the SEALs also share an appreciation for humor and a dislike of self-centered behavior. In dangerous environments, he argued, humor can help people return to rational decisions, while trust is essential for anyone responsible for holding another person’s rope.
The final pages of Rules to Live By focus on environmental responsibility and the example of Chouinard and Kris Tompkins. Chin said Chouinard’s advice is that people should contribute using whatever skills they possess. Chin sees storytelling and his public platform as his own tools.
He cited Wild Life, his film about Doug and Kris Tompkins, as an example of that contribution. The film addresses their efforts to preserve approximately 17 million acres over 25 years while pursuing the creation of national parks. Chin said he has also taken his children to those protected areas and hopes that telling such stories can help preserve wild places for the next generation.
Sources: Outside.