The snow sucks, you’re bound to get frostbite, and if you crash, you’ll be cut to ribbons by jagged rocks and ice.
But hey, there aren’t any lift lines.
No—I’m not talking about a typical Wednesday in Vermont. I’m referring, of course, to what it’s like to ski down Mount Everest.
We now know exactly what this adventure looks like thanks to Polish ski mountaineer Andrzej Bargiel, who on September 22 became the first person to descend from Everest’s summit back to Base Camp on skis without using supplemental oxygen. Yep, Bargiel even skied the dreaded Khumbu Icefall—a feat that deserves its own place on the short list of insane outdoor accomplishments. When Red Bull published the news of Bargiel’s descent in September, I stared at every photograph my jaw agape.
Well, you can now watch Bargiel’s entire descent. On November 7, Red Bull uploaded a 31-minute clip to YouTube, which was shot via a helmet-mounted camera and flying drones. And let me tell you, the whole ordeal looks harrowing, and to be perfectly honest, super not fun.
Think about the worst early-season conditions you’ve encountered at the resort: hard-pack, ice, and rocks, not to mention Jell-O legs. Now multiply that by a billion zillion, and you kind of approach the agony of skiing Mount Everest. In short, it totally sucks.
Like most videos of ski mountaineering feats, this one is not a muscular, pow-bashing, cliff-hucking adrenaline romp with a heavy-metal soundtrack. Bargiel pizza wedges, butt-slides, and scrapes his edges down the mountain. There’s very little woo-woo fun to his skiing. On a few slopes he makes those gorgeous swooping s-turns that we all know and love. But for most of the descent, he looks like a guy on the double-black run who is second-guessing his decision to drop in.
And of course we all know why. There’s no oxygen up there. He’s exhausted from the ascent. And, the consequence of a bobble, or a wrong turn, is certain death. I watched the entire 31-minute YouTube video while digging my fingernails into my couch.
Anyway, I wholeheartedly suggest you watch all 31 minutes of the video. But if you’re looking for the Cliff’s Notes of the full film, I have listed my three favorite scenes:
Balcony Descent
Time into the Film: 9 minutes
Type of Skiing: Powder Turns
Vibe: Woo Hoo!
The opening segment of the film sees Bargiel descend from the peak’s pinnacle, along the jagged summit ridge, and down past the Hilary Step. He moves pretty slowly through this section due to the dizzying exposure—he doesn’t want to careen off the North Face and down into China. Finally, after passing the Balcony, Bargiel encounters a wide-open field of deep snow. He does his best powder S-turns along this ridge, and the skiing actually looks fun! This is the only section of the entire 11,435-foot descent that looks even somewhat enjoyable. Alas, this snowfield sits at 25,000 feet so it’s doubtful that you or I will ever get to shred it.
Lhotse Face
Time into the Film: 13 minutes
Type of Skiing: Controlled Butt-Slide
Vibe: Aaaaaghhh!
After a quick stop in Camp IV, Bargiel hits the dreaded Lhotse Face, one of the steepest sections of the Everest ascent. Yes, this is also the slope where Japanese skier Yuichiro Miura filmed his terrifying footage for the 1975 film The Man Who Skied Down Everest, the Academy Award-winning documentary. In that epic film, Miura attempts to ski down the Lhotse Face with a parachute behind him—he slips and then careens several thousand feet over rocks and ice. Bargiel fares somewhat better, but it ain’t pretty. The day is getting late, and he’s having to make it to Camp II before it gets dark, so he must descend it in the fastest and most direct way possible. Yep, he resorts to the same skiing technique that your nine-year-old nephew used to descend his first mogul run: butt-sliding. Hey, we’ve all been there.
Khumbu Icefall
Time into the Film: 20 minutes
Type of Skiing: Extreme Snowplow
Vibe: Ohh Myy Gawd
The final ten minutes are what we all came here to see. It answers the seminal question that popped into every Everest fan’s mind when they learned about Bargiel’s descent: How the heck does anyone ski down the Khumbu Icefall? Well, I’ve watched this section a few times, and I still don’t really know how Bargiel did it. Bargiel goes slow, picking his way through the labyrinthine glacier, past deep crevasses, and under skyscraper-sized blocks of ice. A flying drone helps him find a skiable path. But he still has to edge his way down icy pitches and through the hardest of hard pack slopes. There’s a lot of extreme pizza-wedge, hard hockey stopping, and some good-old-fashioned side slipping. It’s a true feat of athletic prowess, patience, and bravery. And no—I can’t really compare it to any type of skiing I’ve ever seen or encountered, nor ever hope to.
I just hope that the ski tuning shop that Bargiel visits has lots of P-tex on hand.
The post Skiing Down Mount Everest Does Not Look Like Fun appeared first on Outside Online.
