Daredevil becomes first climber to ski down Everest without extra oxygen after 16 hours in peak’s “death zone,” team says

Poland’s Andrzej Bargiel has become the first climber to ski down the world’s highest mountain without supplemental oxygen, his team and expedition organizer said Thursday.

Bargiel glided down Mount Everest’s snowy slopes after reaching the summit of the 8,849-meter (29,032-foot) mountain on Monday.

“I am on top of the highest mountain in the world and I’m going to descend it on skis,” Bargiel said in a video posted on Instagram early on Thursday.

Bargiel posted another video of the descent on Instagram. “Thank you all for keeping your fingers crossed!” he wrote. “Thank you also to my entire team for being with me throughout this project.”

Everest has seen a handful of ski descents but never a continuous downhill without additional oxygen.

In 2000, Slovenian Davorin Karnicar made the first full ski descent from Everest’s summit to base camp using bottled oxygen.

Chhang Dawa Sherpa of Seven Summit Treks, which organized the latest expedition, said Bargiel skied down to Camp 2, spent a night and then reached the base camp on skis the next day.

“This was extremely challenging and no one had done it before,” Sherpa told Agence France-Presse.

Heavy snowfall forced Bargiel to spend 16 hours above 8,000 meters, known as the “death zone” because thin air and low oxygen levels heighten the risk of altitude sickness.

He was greeted with a khada, a traditional Buddhist scarf, when he arrived at the base camp.

“Sky is the limit? Not for Poles! Andrzej Bargiel has just skied down Mount Everest,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk posted on X.

Bargiel’s team said in a statement that he had made history and called it a “groundbreaking milestone in the world of ski mountaineering.”

Bargiel started eyeing Everest a year after he became the first person to ski down Pakistan’s K2, the second-highest mountain in the world, in 2018. At the time, Bargiel dedicated the feat to the 100th anniversary of Poland regaining its independence, BBC News reported.

But a dangerous overhanging serac forced him to abandon his 2019 attempt. He returned in 2022 but high winds hindered his plans.

The daredevil adventurer has been on a quest to make ski descents of the highest mountains in the world under his Hic Sunt Leones project, a Latin phrase for “here are lions” and used to refer to uncharted territories.

In Pakistan, he has skied down all four of Karakoram’s eight thousanders. He also has skied off Nepal’s Manaslu and Shishapangma in Tibet.

Autumn expeditions on Everest are rare because of snowier terrain, shorter and colder days and a narrow summit window compared to the busy spring.

Earlier this year, famed Sherpa guide Kami Rita reached the summit of Everest for the 31st time, breaking his own record for the most climbs to the top of the world’s highest peak.