BIO

ANDRZEJ BARGIEL (1988) grew up in Łętownia in Małopolska. He showed a talent for skiing and ski mountaineering from an early age. As a teenager, he moved to Zakopane to develop his skills. It quickly turned out that he has above-average predispositions for endurance sports. He is a three-time Polish champion in alpine skiing, third in the general classification of the World Cup in the Espoir category, and the world record holder in the Elbrus Race. Since 2013, he has been implementing his original project HIC SUNT LEONES, which aims to ski down the highest peaks of the Earth without using supplementary oxygen. He is the first Pole to descend from the top of the central summit of eight-thousander Shishapangma (SHISHAPANGMA SKI CHALLENGE 2013). In 2014, he set the record for the fastest ascent to the Manaslu summit (14 h 5 mins), Then he skied down to the base, which took him 21 h 14 min. He was the second man in history to ski from this summit to the base camp (MANASLU SKI CHALLENGE 2014). A year later, as part of the BROAD PEAK SKI CHALLENGE 2015 expedition, he reached the summit of Broad Peak and was the first man in history to ski descend from it. In 2016, he was awarded the title of „Snow Panther” for breaking (by 12 days) the world record in reaching and skiing down five seven-thousanders in the former USSR. The athlete’s most tremendous success is the K2 SKI CHALLENGE 2018 project, which consists in reaching the summit of K2 and skiing from the top of this challenging and technically demanding mountain, which no man in the world has managed to do before. In 2019, during the expedition to Mount Everest (EVEREST SKI CHALLENGE 2019), due to bad weather and the danger of a huge (50m high and 30m wide) serac hanging 800 meters above the glacier and detached from the ground, he had to decide to stop the expedition. In April 2021, he set off on the KARAKORAM SKI EXPEDITION, aiming to climb and ski from two six-thousanders – Laila Peak and Yawash Sar II, which he managed to accomplish. In August 2022, he set off for the Himalayas again to make his second attempt to reach the top of the world’s highest mountain and ski down without supplementary oxygen.