Crimson Bull Athlete Andrzej Bargiel Skis Down Mount Everest With out Supplementary Oxygen

Photograph credit score: Bartłomiej Bargiel/Crimson Bull Content material Pool
Crimson Bull athlete Andrzej Bargiel stood on the prime of the world’s highest level, 8,849 meters (29,032 ft), the place the air is appallingly skinny. On September 22, 2025, he took to his skis from the highest of Everest all the way in which right down to base camp, relying on the mountain for each breath of air.

It began a couple of days earlier within the low season, when the vacationers had been lengthy gone and the South Col path was abandoned like a ghost city. He’d climbed up from base camp and over the Western Cwm – an enormous ice basin that completely mirrored the blue sky above. Beneath, the Khumbu Icefall stretched out – a chaos of huge seracs and gigantic crevasses that appear to come back to life, as in the event that they’re exhaling and inhaling for actual. At Camp II he stopped to take inventory of himself, refocus after that oxygen-starved mind of his earlier than getting again to the true grunt work: a 16-hour crawl as much as the highest on his personal within the dying zone.

Up at 8,000 meters, the oxygen ranges are just about similar to these you’d discover at 30,000 ft on a aircraft. Greater than 6,000 individuals have made it to the highest since 1953, however lower than 200 of them did it with no tank of bottled oxygen. Andrzej managed to affix that membership then promptly broke it by turning round and snowboarding the entire means again down. Nobody else has ever managed to ski up there with out oxygen, even with a tank strapped to their again. His brother Bartek was following alongside from a secure distance, his drone buzzing round like an invisible sherpa.

Photograph credit score: Bartłomiej Bargiel/Crimson Bull Content material Pool
He launched off the highest of the mountain, and the snow sprayed out behind him in nice rooster-tails of white. As night time began to fall he slid into Camp II, his boots had been a lead weight and his physique was nearly able to seize up from exhaustion. On the twenty third, he locked in for one more day. Bartek’s drone – nonetheless buzzing away out within the distance – was his solely information as he navigated the treacherous serac fields the place one incorrect transfer might ship him tumbling into the void.

Photograph credit score: Bartłomiej Bargiel/Crimson Bull Content material Pool
Bartłomiej Pawlikowski acquired the entire thing on digicam from a reasonably low angle & captured the full-on vertigo. He’s a Tatra born photographer & has the scars to show it, having crawled by way of caves and shot from mountain camps earlier than – so he is aware of this sort of terrain just like the again of his hand. His pictures present Bargiel in mid stride on a ridge nearly large sufficient to stability on a tightrope, the clouds boiling up beneath him like a correct stormy sea.
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