Jake Norton has a rare talent for putting a passion for the mountains and their people into powerful words and images. As a guide and high-altitude mountaineer, his skills are highly respected, but it’s his ability to communicate the essence of his climbing experiences that makes him one of the most inspiring climbers on our team. Climber, photographer, filmmaker, philanthropist, and inspirational speaker, this renaissance man of the mountains clearly makes a difference through his words, images, and actions.

Norton has worked as a professional guide since 1993. He was part of the team that discovered the body of George Mallory on Everest in 1999, and the first person to visit and document all of the pre-World War II camps on Everest. Norton has climbed extensively throughout the Himalayas and Andes, and also retraced Sir Ernest Shackleton’s 1917 crossing of the island of South Georgia. He has summited the world’s tallest peak three times and served as the team leader for the Eddie Bauer return to the West Ridge of Mount Everest in 2012, after which he and fellow athlete David Morton Filmed, Directed, and Produced the award-winning film, High and Hallowed: Everest 1963. He has participated in 30 expeditions—to Nepal, Tibet, and India—summited Denali, Kilimanjaro, Vinson, and Aconcagua, as well as made 93 trips up Mt. Rainier.

His most current philanthropic mission is telling the story of mountains and their critical link to clean water, our world’s most precious resource. To that end, he co-created the 2012 award-winning film The Water Tower, has raised over $450,000 for global water and sanitation causes, and Filmed, co-Directed and Produced the multi-award winning 2016 film Holy (un)Holy River—a source-to-sea passion project telling the story of the Ganges River in India, and first profiled on the Live Your Adventure blog. Norton was Director of the American Mountaineering Museum in Golden, CO, serves on the International Advisory Board for The Mountain Institute, and is an Ambassador for the United Nations Mountain Partnership. He has covered assignments for Discovery Channel, PBS/NOVA, BBC, National Geographic, and Forbes. He is a proud Colorado resident.