A Polish adventure skier has made history by becoming the first person to climb up and ski down Mount Everest without using additional oxygen.

The climb was Andrzej Bargiel’s third attempt at reaching the summit of Everest, which is the tallest mountain on Earth at 8,849 metres (29,032 feet) high. Dangerous conditions had forced the 37-year-old to abandon his earlier attempts in 2019 and 2022.

“The summit itself was extremely difficult,” Bargiel said. “I’d never spent so much time at such a high altitude in my life, so that was a challenge in itself. Skiing down Everest without oxygen was a dream that had been growing inside me for years.”

According to the Himalayan database, more than 6,000 people have climbed the mountain. However, only about 200 have done it without additional bottled oxygen. A few people have skied back down, but nobody has ever completed a continuous downhill descent without supplementary oxygen.

On Monday, it took nearly 16 hours for Bargiel to climb through the “death zone”. This is the area above 8,000 metres where oxygen levels are dangerously low. At the top of the mountain, the air is so thin that climbers only get about a third of the oxygen that is available at sea level. As a result, this can cause brain damage, fluid in the lungs, and even death.

On Tuesday morning, Bargiel skied down through the Khumbu Icefall, which is a maze of ice towers and deep crevasses. This section is known as one of Everest’s most dangerous areas. He arrived at base camp after completing the descent. His brother, Bartek, guided him through this section partly by flying a drone.

“I split the descent into two parts because navigating the technically difficult icefall in relatively safe conditions was only possible in the morning,” Bargiel explained.

Bargiel’s team said in a statement that it was a “groundbreaking milestone in the world of ski mountaineering”.

The Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, celebrated the achievement on X, writing: “Sky is the limit? Not for Poles! Andrzej Bargiel has just skied down Mount Everest.”

This is not Bargiel’s first major achievement. In 2018, he became the first person to ski down Pakistan’s K2, which is the second highest mountain in the world.

In an interview with the Guardian in 2020, Bargiel said: “No one thought it could be done; even my own brother had doubts. It taught me the value of patience – and that nobody else can make your dreams come true.”