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PANERAI GOES TO<br />
NEW HEIGHTS<br />
Professional mountaineer Jimmy Chin is Panerai’s newly appointed watch ambassador.<br />
He talks to Revolution about his unexpected career choice and his extraordinary ability to<br />
remain calm in the face of fear.<br />
WORDS ADAM CRANIOTES<br />
Panerai ambassador Jimmy Chin leads the sort<br />
of life that most folks can only imagine. Having<br />
achieved world-wide fame with the release of his<br />
2019 Academy Award-winning documentary, Free Solo,<br />
however, it’s easy to overlook the fact that he’s been a<br />
world-class mountaineer, professional photographer and<br />
philanthropist for decades.<br />
In the course of his career, he has summited Mt.<br />
Everest, Mt. Kilimanjaro, El Capitan, among others; and his<br />
photography has been featured in National Geographic, Men’s<br />
Journal, and more. He has also led expeditions in China,<br />
Pakistan, Greenland, Tanzania, Chad, Mali, South Africa,<br />
Borneo, India and Argentina.<br />
Jimmy splits his time between Jackson Hole, Wyoming,<br />
and New York City, where his wife, director Elizabeth Chai<br />
Vasarhelyi, and two children reside.<br />
We were lucky enough to catch up with him in NYC to<br />
talk about the origins of his climbing career and how he<br />
deals with, and overcomes, fear.<br />
When did you get the climbing bug?<br />
I got it pretty late in life, probably around 17. But it was kind<br />
of instant, it was kind of love at first sight. I did it and I was<br />
like, “Okay, this is something that moves me in a way that<br />
I’ve never experienced before.” You know, the first climb I<br />
ever did was a pinnacle experience of my life right there.<br />
And then there’s the lifestyle around it. It’s kind of this<br />
vehicle to explore the landscape and I loved being outside<br />
and being in nature and wild places, so it spoke to me on a bit<br />
of a different level. And then there’s the mental aspect of it,<br />
the challenges of facing and overcoming your fears. It tests<br />
you in all these different ways, and it continues to do that.<br />
That feeling I got the first time I went climbing, I still have it.<br />
You were raised in Minnesota. Not a whole lot of<br />
mountains there, right?<br />
(Laughs) No, there aren’t. As it happens, I just went out<br />
with some friends who were climbers, and we drove down<br />
BACK TO THE FUTURE 133
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