FROM SKIING DOWN EVEREST to climbing up Shark’s Fin on Mount Meru in the Himalaya, Jimmy Chin is a real-life superhero tackling feats no one has done before. But surprisingly, this extreme mountain sports photographer, Oscar-winning film director and world-class mountaineer doesn’t consider scaling one of the world’s tallest granite walls the greatest risk he ever took. Rather, it was a choice in his early 20s—“committing to the dream I had, moving to Yosemite and living in a car,” Chin tells Newsweek about his decision to follow this dream of climbing mountains.
“As my friend and mentor, Jon Krakauer, once said to me, ‘There are two great risks in life, risking too much, and risking too little.’ There is maybe a perception that climbing was what I always wanted to…