Watch As Red Bull Athlete Andrzej Bargiel Skis Down Mount Everest

Photo Credit: Bartłomiej Pawlikowski / Red Bull Content Pool

If you thought summiting Mount Everest was badass, wait until you hear what Red Bull athlete Andrzej Bargiel just pulled off. The 37-year-old Polish ski mountaineer didn’t just climb the world’s tallest mountain without oxygen—he strapped on skis at the top and carved his way down nearly 9,000 meters of frozen death to Base Camp. No bottled oxygen. No safety net. Just pure human grit at the edge of what our bodies can physically survive.

16 Hours in the Death Zone

Let’s put this into perspective. Andrzej Bargiel spent nearly 16 hours above 8,000 meters (what climbers call the “death zone”), where your body literally starts dying. At Everest’s summit, you’re breathing about 1/3rd of the oxygen available at sea level. Back in the 1960s, doctors said climbing at that altitude without oxygen would be “almost certainly fatal.” Even today, of the 6,000+ people who’ve summited Everest, lessthan 200 have done it without supplementary oxygen. That’s less than 3%.

Bargiel’s expedition doctor put it bluntly: “If you look at human physiology with such a small amount of oxygen in the air, what Andrzej has achieved goes beyond human capabilities. At this altitude, without supplemental oxygen, the body has to fight for every single step.”

Now imagine doing all that, then skiing down.

The Descent That Rewrote the Record Books

After reaching the summit at 3:17 PM on September 22nd, Bargiel didn’t waste time taking selfies. Within minutes, he clipped into his skis and started dropping. He navigated past the infamous Hillary Step, carved along exposed ridges, and flew past Camp IV at the South Col. By 8:30 PM, he’d made it to Camp II, covering thousands of vertical meters in just over 5 hours, where darkness forced him to stop for the night.

The next morning brought what might’ve been the gnarliest part: the Khumbu Icefall. This nightmare maze of shifting ice towers and bottomless crevasses has killed dozens of climbers over the years. Bargiel skied through it without ropes or fixed lines, guided partly by a drone his brother Bartek was flying overhead.

“Just navigating such difficult terrain was a big challenge for me. The fact that I was guiding my own brother certainly didn’t make it any easier (laughs),” Bartek said after. “The hardest moments were crossing the ridge and the glacier. When Andrzej made it through those sections, I could finally breathe and enjoy the last moments of the descent together with him.”

A Legacy of World Firsts

This isn’t Bargiel’s first rodeo in the insanity department. He’s the only person on Earth who’s skied down both Everest and K2 (the two tallest mountains) without oxygen. He also claimed first-ever ski descents on Broad Peak, Gasherbrum I, and Gasherbrum II. All without bottled oxygen.

American mountain guide Adrian Ballinger, who’s summited Everest nine times, summed it up: “His successful complete ski descent of Everest without supplementary oxygen is monumental – combining the challenge of climbing the world’s tallest peak without oxygen (spending 16 hours above 8,000 meters on the ascent, and doing it in the unusual and empty autumn season), with the huge descent on skis through technical and exposed terrain, is almost impossible to comprehend.”

Bargiel himself kept it simple: “It’s one of the most important milestones in my sports career. Skiing down Everest without oxygen was a dream that had been growing inside me for years.”

The whole expedition, Base Camp to summit and back, took just over four days. You can watch the epic 31-minute video of his run above. It’s absolutely unreal!