BIO AND SPORTS CAREER
Andrzej Bargiel was born on April 18, 1988 in Łętownia, near Jordanów in southern Poland. Since he was a child, he showed a great predisposition for sports and an irrepressible energy that he felt the need to vent by throwing himself at breakneck speed into the most unlikely adventures, giving a lot to do and not a few worries to his father Józef and mother Maria. The family he comes from is certainly not well-off and it is often the economic conditions that limit Andrzej's sporting career, as happened in high school, when a promising future as a mountain bike champion was abruptly interrupted by the breakdown of his bicycle, which neither his sports club nor his family had the resources to replace... Luckily, his older brother Grzesiek involved him in his work as a mountain rescuer in the area of the village of Białka Tatrzańska, where Andrzej discovered his love (and extraordinary talent) for ski mountaineering and steep, extreme descents. In 2007, at 19, he won the Polish ski mountaineering championship and two years later he was third in the Senior World Championship. 2010 saw him in first place in the Elbrus Race, the very tough race on the highest peak in the Caucasus, won by Andrzej with an exceptional time, which improved the previous record set by none other than mountaineering legend Denis Urubko. His dreams, however, point much higher, towards the highest and wildest peaks on Earth, which he wants to climb in the "cleanest" way (that is, without the use of supplemental oxygen) and then descend on his skis, conceiving a great project baptized with the evocative name of "Hic sunt leones". After two attempts stopped by bad weather on Manaslu and Lhotse, in 2013 he finally completes the ascent of Shisha Pangma in just 30 hours and then descends from the summit on skis. The following year he is on Manaslu: climbed and descended on skis in a record time of just 21 hours and 15 minutes. In 2015 he takes just 8 hours to go from base camp to the summit of Broad Peak, and another 3 to complete the first complete descent on skis of the mountain. He needs just 30 days, in 2016, to chain together the ascents of the five highest peaks of the former Soviet Union, thus winning the prestigious Snow Leopard award. 2018 is the year that definitively consecrates him in the legend of mountaineering and extreme skiing: he becomes the first man in the world to descend with skis on his feet from the summit to the base of K2. The rest is recent history: in the summer of 2023 Andrzej joins the Ferrino ambassador team and celebrates this new collaboration by linking in the space of just seven days the ascent and complete descent with skis of Gasherbrum II and Gasherbrum I. A splendid feat and a great incentive to continue pursuing his dream... many more adventures await him to be able to crown the "Hic sunt Leones" project.
