In an impressive, old-fashioned climb, Bartek Ziemski of Poland has summited Lhotse before anyone else this season, with no previously fixed ropes, no tracks, and no Sherpa support on the summit push. To top it off, he then skied down to Base Camp. All without bottled oxygen.
Details are still to come, but Seven Summit Treks director Chhang Dawa Sherpa reports that it was a “full ski descent from the summit all the way back to Base Camp.”
Bartek Ziemski at the Khumbu Icefall. Photo: Imagine Nepal
Waiting for details
A complete ski descent would need to include the Khumbu Icefall with its highly technical sections, a passage near an unstable serac, and at least one large crevasse crossing equipped with several aluminum ladders.
We don’t know when Ziemski summited or whether his ski descent was nonstop.
Ziemski certainly put in the effort to reach the summit of Lhotse in good time. When the Icefall Doctors halted their work due to an unstable serac above the route through the Khumbu Icefall, Ziemski joined a group of Sherpas from several agencies and found a way to Camp 1 that day.
Solo from Camp 4
Ziemski has previously climbed and skied down seven other 8,000’ers: Annapurna, Dhaulagiri, Broad Peak, Gasherbrum II, Kangchenjunga, and Makalu without ever using supplemental oxygen. He was the first to ski Dhaulagiri and Kangchenjunga.
On this latest climb, he may have broken trail all the way from Camp 4 to the summit, which would have been a titanic effort, given the snowfall in recent days.
In the meantime, Chhang Dawa has posted a video, taken from Base Camp, showing Ziemskli skiing down in the distance.
Manish Marharjan, a Nepalese filmaker and drone operator working at Everest with 14 Peaks Expeditions, also posted an exciting video of Ziemski skiing and arriving back in Base Camp.
