New Footage Reveals Andrzej Bargiel's Descent of Nanga Parbat

Red Bull has released the first full footage of Andrzej Bargiel's oxygen-free ski descent of Nanga Parbat, giving the public its clearest look yet at a feat the Polish ski mountaineer completed back in June — and adding another chapter to his ongoing project of skiing down the world's most fearsome peaks.

A mountain that punishes skiers and climbers alike

At 8,126 metres, Nanga Parbat is the ninth-highest mountain on Earth, and one that earned its "Killer Mountain" nickname the hard way: 31 people died attempting it before Austrian climber Hermann Buhl finally reached the summit alone in 1953, on a 40-hour round trip that remains one of mountaineering's most famous solo feats. Reinhold Messner added his own chapter in 1970 with the first ascent of the mountain's towering Rupal Face — a climb that cost him his brother Günther's life on the descent. More than three decades later, Nanga Parbat still carries one of the highest fatality rates of any 8,000-metre peak.

Skiing it has proven just as stubborn a problem as climbing it. According to Red Bull's own account of the expedition, the mountain's upper Diamir Face — riddled with a barrier of seracs, the towering ice blocks that form where glaciers fracture — had defeated previous ski attempts, forcing skiers to unclip and pick their way through on foot. Bargiel's achievement was finding a way to ski through that obstacle via the Messner Route, keeping his skis on for a continuous line down.

Two days, nine hours, no bottled oxygen

Bargiel reached the 26,660-foot summit and completed his descent at 3 p.m. on June 30, 2026, with the full round trip — climb and ski included — taking two days and nine hours. He climbed and skied without supplemental oxygen, spending weeks beforehand acclimatizing to prepare for time in the "death zone," the altitude above roughly 8,000 metres where the air is too thin to sustain the body for long without it.

Janusz Gołąb, Bargiel's climbing support and a fellow Polish alpinist who has worked with him on previous expeditions, described it as one of the most technically complex high-altitude ski projects he'd witnessed, saying Bargiel had to read and solve the mountain's terrain continuously as he went, with no margin for error on Nanga Parbat.

The latest line in a singular career

Nanga Parbat is only the most recent entry in what's become one of the more remarkable resumes in extreme skiing. Bargiel made his name in July 2018 as the first person to climb and ski K2, the world's second-highest and most technically demanding 8,000-metre peak, without bottled oxygen — a descent so difficult that every skier who'd previously attempted it had either failed or died trying. He followed that with an oxygen-free ski descent of Everest in September 2025.

Together, the three descents place Bargiel among a small handful of skiers who've climbed and skied multiple 8,000-metre giants without supplemental oxygen — a distinction that separates his projects from most high-altitude ski mountaineering, where oxygen and fixed ropes are the norm above 8,000 metres. With K2, Everest and now Nanga Parbat behind him, speculation over which peak might be next has already started among followers of his expeditions, though Bargiel has historically kept his plans quiet until he's ready to attempt them.