Jerzy Kukuczka was the second climber to scale all fourteen of the world’s highest mountains, but that’s not why he’s remembered as one of the greatest alpinists of all time. It’s the way he climbed them.
His résumé is mind-boggling. In less than eight years, he climbed all fourteen of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks, including four in winter. He was a pioneer of the alpine style and among the first to climb regularly above 8,000 meters without supplemental oxygen. And he did it all on a shoestring, in secondhand and homemade gear, with money he earned through hard work and black-market hustles in his native Poland.
Kukuczka is often compared with Reinhold Messner, with whom he raced to finish the so-called Crown of the Himalayas. Messner won that race, though Kukuczka did it faster and in better style.
Take nothing away from Messner, who put up six new routes on 8,000-meter peaks. Kukuczka blazed ten. “If I had a choice,
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