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Polish ski mountaineering phenomenon Andrzej Bargiel has secured another unprecedented milestone by becoming the first person in history to successfully ski down all four of the Karakoram range’s five 8,000-meter peaks. As celebrated in a recent announcement by Red Bull on Instagram, the athlete completed the historic sweep by navigating the steep, treacherous slopes of the Gasherbrum peaks in Pakistan entirely without the use of supplemental oxygen. This extreme high-altitude achievement builds directly upon his previous groundbreaking descents of Broad Peak and K2, further cementing his status as one of the most daring alpine athletes of the modern era.
Bargiel’s relentless pursuit of high-altitude ski descents has continually captured global attention through his ongoing Hic Sunt Leones project. His growing list of triumphs includes a monumental feat in autumn 2025, when he became the first person to climb and ski entirely from the summit of Mount Everest to base camp without bottled oxygen. Bargiel also remains the only human to have ever skied down K2 under those same strict, oxygen-free conditions. His uncanny ability to operate in the upper limits of the “death zone” while maintaining the extreme physical coordination required for steep mountain turns has completely rewritten the rulebook of human endurance.
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With nearly all the Karakoram giants now checked off his list, Bargiel is already pushing toward the final Pakistani 8,000 meter peak. The legendary mountaineer launched an expedition on June 10, 2026, targeting Nanga Parbat. The 8,126-meter peak is widely known as “Killer Mountain” due to its extreme vertical reliefs and notoriously rocky, snowless conditions that have thwarted all previous full ski attempts by international teams.
Nanga Parbat represents the final 8,000-meter peak left on Bargiel’s checklist in Pakistan. Accompanied by a dedicated crew and expert alpinists Janusz Golab and Dariusz Zaluski, he is currently aiming for a clean, continuous line down the mountain’s Diamir Face in early July 2026. If successful, the Polish pioneer will stand entirely alone as the first human to successfully ski down every single 8,000-meter peak in Pakistan as he inches his way towards skiing all 8,000 meter peaks in the world without oxygen. He currently stands at 7 of 14 of the 8,000 meter peaks.
