Jerzy Kukuczka
Encyclopedia
Jerzy Kukuczka born in Katowice
Katowice
Katowice is a city in Silesia in southern Poland, on the Kłodnica and Rawa rivers . Katowice is located in the Silesian Highlands, about north of the Silesian Beskids and about southeast of the Sudetes Mountains.It is the central district of the Upper Silesian Metropolis, with a population of 2...

, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

, was a Polish alpine and high-altitude climber. On 18 September 1987, he became the second man, after Reinhold Messner
Reinhold Messner
Reinhold Messner is an Italian mountaineer and explorer from Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol "whose astonishing feats on Everest and on peaks throughout the world have earned him the status of the greatest climber in history." He is renowned for making the first solo ascent of Mount Everest without...

, to climb all fourteen eight-thousander
Eight-thousander
The eight-thousanders are the fourteen independent mountains on Earth that are more than high above sea level. They are all located in the Himalayan and Karakoram mountain ranges in Asia....

s in the world.

Eight-thousanders

Kukuczka is widely considered among the climbing community to be one of the best high-altitude climbers in history. He ascended all fourteen mountains in just under eight years, a shorter time than any climber before (Reinhold Messner included - it took him 16 years, more than twice as much as Kukuczka, to climb all 8-thousanders) or since. In the process, Kukuczka established ten new routes and climbed four summits in winter. He was one of an elite group of Polish Himalayan mountaineers who specialized in winter ascents. He established 9 new routes on the eight-thousanders, 4 of which were winter routes (compared to 6 new routes of Messner's, none of them during winter).
  1. 1979 — Lhotse
    Lhotse
    Lhotse is the fourth highest mountain on Earth and is connected to Everest via the South Col. In addition to the main summit at 8,516 metres above sea level, Lhotse Middle is and Lhotse Shar is...

     - West Face, Normal Route.
  2. 1980 — Mount Everest
    Mount Everest
    Mount Everest is the world's highest mountain, with a peak at above sea level. It is located in the Mahalangur section of the Himalayas. The international boundary runs across the precise summit point...

     - South Pillar, New Route.
  3. 1981 — Makalu
    Makalu
    Makalu is the fifth highest mountain in the world at and is located southeast of Mount Everest, on the border between Nepal and China...

     - Variation to Makalu La/North-West Ridge, New Route, Alpine Style
    Alpine style
    Alpine style refers to mountaineering in a self-sufficient manner, thereby carrying all of one's food, shelter, equipment etc. as one climbs, as opposed to expedition style mountaineering which involves setting up a fixed line of stocked camps on the mountain which can be accessed at one's leisure...

    , Solo.
  4. 1982 — Broad Peak
    Broad Peak
    Broad Peak , is the 12th highest mountain on Earth, with an elevation of 8,051 meters . The literal translation of "Broad Peak" to Faichan Kangri is not accepted among the Balti people.- Geography :...

     - West Spur, Normal Route, Alpine Style.
  5. 1983 — Gasherbrum II
    Gasherbrum II
    Gasherbrum II , also known as K4, is the 13th highest mountain on Earth, located on the border of Gilgit-Baltistan province, Pakistan and Xinjiang, China...

     - South-East Spur, New Route, Alpine Style.
  6. 1983 — Gasherbrum I
    Gasherbrum I
    Gasherbrum I , also known as Hidden Peak or K5, is the 11th highest peak on Earth, located on the Pakistan-China border in Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan and Xinjiang region of China. Gasherbrum I is part of the Gasherbrum massif, located in the Karakoram region of the Himalaya...

     - South-West Face, New Route, Alpine Style.
  7. 1984 — Broad Peak
    Broad Peak
    Broad Peak , is the 12th highest mountain on Earth, with an elevation of 8,051 meters . The literal translation of "Broad Peak" to Faichan Kangri is not accepted among the Balti people.- Geography :...

     - Traverse of North, Middle and Main Summits, New Route, Alpine Style.
  8. 1985 — Dhaulagiri
    Dhaulagiri
    Dhaulagiri is Earth's seventh highest mountain at ; one of fourteen over eight thousand metres. Dhaulagiri was first climbed May 13, 1960 by a Swiss/Austrian expedition....

     - North-East Spur, Normal Route, First Winter Ascent.
  9. 1985 — Cho Oyu
    Cho Oyu
    Cho Oyu is the sixth highest mountain in the world at above sea level. Cho Oyu lies in the Himalayas and is 20 km west of Mount Everest, at the border between China and Nepal...

     - South-East Pillar, New Route, First Winter Ascent, Second Summit Team.
  10. 1985 — Nanga Parbat
    Nanga Parbat
    Nanga Parbat is the ninth highest mountain on Earth, the second highest mountain in Pakistan and among the eight-thousanders with a summit elevation of 8,126 meters...

     - South-East Pillar, New Route.
  11. 1986 — Kanchenjunga - South-West Face, Normal Route, First Winter Ascent.
  12. 1986 — K2
    K2
    K2 is the second-highest mountain on Earth, after Mount Everest...

     - South Face, New Route.
  13. 1986 — Manaslu
    Manaslu
    Manaslu , also known as Kutang) is the eighth highest mountain in the world, and is located in the Mansiri Himal, part of the Nepalese Himalayas, in the west-central part of Nepal. Its name, which means "Mountain of the Spirit", comes from the Sanskrit word Manasa, meaning "intellect" or "soul"...

     - North-East Face, New Route, Alpine Style.
  14. 1987 — Annapurna I - North Face, Normal Route, First Winter Ascent.
  15. 1987 — Shisha Pangma - West Ridge, New Route, Alpine Style, Ski Descent.
  16. 1988 — Annapurna
    Annapurna
    Annapurna is a section of the Himalayas in north-central Nepal that includes Annapurna I, thirteen additional peaks over and 16 more over ....

     East Summit - South Face, New Route, Alpine Style.


He climbed all summits except for Mount Everest without use of supplemental oxygen.

Kukuczka died attempting to climb the unclimbed South Face of Lhotse
Lhotse
Lhotse is the fourth highest mountain on Earth and is connected to Everest via the South Col. In addition to the main summit at 8,516 metres above sea level, Lhotse Middle is and Lhotse Shar is...

 in Nepal
Nepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...

 on 24 October 1989. Leading a pitch at an altitude of about 8,200 meters on a 6 mm secondhand rope he had picked up in a market in Kathmandu (according to Ryszard Pawłowski, Kukuczka's climbing partner on the tragic day, the main single rope used by the team was too jammed to be used and the climbers decided to use transport rope instead), the cord either was cut or snapped from a fall, plunging Kukuczka to his death.

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