When I was 15 years old, my father embarked on a seemingly impossible quest.
He became consumed with finding a copy of the 1975 Oscar-winning documentary The Man Who Skied Down Everest. The famed film chronicles the at-the-time bonkers quest of Japanese alpinist Yuichiro Miura to ascend the world’s highest peak and then descend it—well, part of it, anyway—on skis.
Alas, this was the mid-nineties, the era of Blockbuster Video ubiquity, and long before the Internet made obtaining obscure movies a one-click ordeal. For years, my poor dad drove around to Denver-area independent video stores asking if they had a copy. And then, after so much setback, my dad finally found one. Triumphantly, he sat me down on the couch, popped the video cassette into our VCR, and hit play.
Look, as an adult, I’ve come to appreciate The Man Who Skied Down Everest for its contemplative storytelling and (by seventies technology standards) mind-boggling footage. But as a 15-year-old who consumed Mountain Dew-drenched extreme sports video, I was pretty underwhelmed by the clip of Miura’s actual descent. The 2:20 minute video is grainy and shaky, with seventies pew-pew sound effects. With a parachute billowing behind him, Miura makes a couple of pizza turns on the sheer and horribly icy Lhotse Face before catching an edge and then tumbling several thousand feet to the bank of a crevasse. But hey, he lived to tell the tale.
Of course, memories of this viewing come to mind whenever a new video surfaces of a daredevil ski mountaineer descending a massive peak. And it’s all I can think about this week after watching the latest clip to enter the oeuvre.
On September 25, Red Bull uploaded a clip to Instagram of Polish ski mountaineer Andrzej Bargiel skiing down Mount Everest. For anyone unfamiliar with Andrzej Bargiel, he skis steep, sheer, and utterly deadly slopes like you or I might descend a catwalk. He’s the only person to have ever climbed and then skied down K2.
According to Red Bull, Bargiel skied from the summit down to Camp IV, all the way down the Lhotse Face, across the Western Cwm, down the Khumbu Icefall (huh?), and on to Base Camp, for a total of 5.5 miles and 8,215 vertical feet. It’s the standard Nepal route that, each year, hundreds climb up and down. And Bargiel did the whole thing ski descent the use of supplemental oxygen.
This was his third attempt at the feat, having tried and come up short in 2019 and 2022.
The feat is reportedly a first. Yes, plenty of skiers have descended parts of Everest since Yuichiro Miura’s tumble 50 years ago. But nobody has done the whole shebang without supplemental oxygen. Think it’s hard to descend the brutal moguls at your local resort? Try doing that at 29,000 feet.
How Bargiel navigated the skyscraper-sized ice blocks, sheer dropoffs, and general chaos of the Khumbu Icefall—the sheer glacier just above Base Camp—on skis is itself a feat that makes my head hurt.
Those of us who follow Mount Everest expeditions knew that Bargiel was up to something—Explorersweb and other publications had reported on his expedition to ascend Mount Everest earlier this summer. As my colleague Ben Ayers wrote in a recent story, ascending Mount Everest in the fall is a real roll of the dice. The peak is usually covered in deep snow after the summer monsoons. It’s windy and bleak, and there are fewer guides and expeditions on the mountain to help break trail.
According to Red Bull, the climb itself was anything but easy. It took Bargiel 16 hours to make it from Camp IV to the summit. He did climb with supplemental oxygen.
OK—so the ski descent wasn’t all in one push. He skied to Camp II and rested for the night, before waking up the next day to complete the rest of the journey.
The Instagram clip of his accolade is amazing, and it showcases just how far mountaineering, skiing, and yes, video production at 29,000 feet, have come. Unlike the clip from 1975, this one is crisp, clear, and shows every turn in high definition. I will be eagerly waiting by my laptop for the full documentary of this feat to air.
Like many Everest nerds, the biggest question I have is how the heck he skied down the Khumbu Icefall. Red Bull gave paltry few details in its rundown. Apparently, his brother, Bartek, used a flying drone to help him find the best way through the ice.
“I split the descent into two parts, as navigating the technically difficult icefall in relatively safe conditions was only possible in the morning,” Bargiel said in a release. “The summit itself was arduous and difficult. I’d never spent so much time at such an altitude in my life, so that was a challenge in itself.”
Sounds pretty tough. But is it as hard as locating an obscure movie back in 1996? The jury is still out.
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