Poland did not invent winter in the mountains, but it turned winter ascents of the eight-thousanders into a great discipline in their own right. In a country with closed borders, a shortage of hard currency and mediocre equipment, a school grew up that was the first to climb Everest in winter, and six more eight-thousanders in the 1980s.
The term “Ice Warriors” stuck to the Polish winter Himalayan climbers, but it should not turn real people into heroes who never made a mistake. This history is made of outstanding routes, poverty, team discipline, conflict, frostbite and tragedy.
Why Polish mountaineers became the strongest in winter
The answer does not come down to national character. After the Second World War Polish mountaineering grew up in a club system in which the difficult Tatras were within reach, while a trip to the Alps or the Himalaya took permits, hard currency and ingenuity. To pay for expeditions, climbers took industrial work at height abroad, rigging and painting chimneys. They came to a mountain not as well-off amateurs but as a team that had earned the freight, the permit and the journey itself.
The shortage cut both ways. Poor clothing and heavy equipment objectively raised the risk, yet constant repair, running their own logistics and living with uncertainty built real self-sufficiency. Polish teams could work for a long time in bad weather, build camps and make decisions as a group. This was expedition style pushed to its limit.
The cultural setting mattered as well. Polish magazines and clubs recorded routes meticulously; strong partnerships grew up in the Tatras and were then tested in the Pamirs and the Hindu Kush. Different kinds of leader worked side by side: the strategist Andrzej Zawada, the fast and versatile Jerzy Kukuczka, the enduring Krzysztof Wielicki, the innovator Wojciech Kurtyka, and the organisers and rope partners without whom the “star” summits would never have happened.
Andrzej Zawada and the winter eight-thousander project
Andrzej Zawada saw winter not as a calendar curiosity but as the next logical frontier of Himalayan climbing. In 1973-1974 a Polish team made the first winter ascent above 7000 m, on Noshaq. Zawada then organised the winter Lhotse expedition of 1974-1975: the team did not reach the summit, but it climbed above 8000 m and gained the experience without which Everest would have been impossible.
Zawada’s strength lay in design. A winter permit had to be secured, tonnes of freight delivered, base camp held, radio communications organised, the summit pairs settled, and the team kept from falling apart while it waited. He did not stand on the summit of Everest, but it was his leadership that produced the result. That is an important correction to the popular story, which notices only the two people in the photograph at the top.
The first winter ascent of Everest
On 17 February 1980 Leszek Cichy and Krzysztof Wielicki reached the summit of Everest. It was the first winter ascent of any eight-thousander. The permit ran to 15 February, but the Nepali authorities extended it by two days. The final push was made in extreme cold and wind, at a time of year when most ordinary expeditions do not even treat the summit as a reachable goal.
The climb was made with supplementary oxygen and by the existing South Col route. Those conditions take nothing from the historical first: in winter the environment itself changes the scale of the task. Short daylight, frozen equipment, an icy wind, dry cold, the absence of settled weather windows and the huge load on the whole chain of camps turn a familiar line into a different route in terms of the decisions it demands.
Cichy sent a line down to base camp: “if this is not Everest, then what is?” But the proof was not in the words: photographs, the team’s testimony, the radio traffic and the checking that followed secured the result. That standard of transparency still applies to records set today.
The golden decade of Polish winter Himalayism
| Peak | Date | First winter ascensionists | What stands out |
|---|---|---|---|
| Everest | 17.02.1980 | Krzysztof Wielicki, Leszek Cichy | The first eight-thousander in winter |
| Manaslu | 12.01.1984 | Maciej Berbeka, Ryszard Gajewski | A Polish expedition |
| Dhaulagiri | 21.01.1985 | Jerzy Kukuczka, Andrzej Czok | The worst of weather, and frostbite |
| Cho Oyu | 12.02.1985 | Maciej Berbeka, Maciej Pawlikowski | A first winter ascent by a new route |
| Kangchenjunga | 11.01.1986 | Jerzy Kukuczka, Krzysztof Wielicki | The third highest mountain in the world |
| Annapurna I | 03.02.1987 | Jerzy Kukuczka, Artur Hajzer | A hard mountain, prone to avalanche |
| Lhotse | 31.12.1988 | Krzysztof Wielicki | A solo push to the summit |
Makalu was left without a winter summit until 2009, when Simone Moro and Denis Urubko completed the climb. That fact matters for an accurate count: Polish dominance in the 1980s does not mean that every first winter summit belonged to one school.
The Polish run of the 1980s is remarkable for its density as well. In January 1985 Kukuczka and Czok were on Dhaulagiri, and in February another Polish team finished Cho Oyu. In 1986 Kukuczka and Wielicki climbed Kangchenjunga. The people involved did not specialise in winter alone: in summer they opened new routes, worked in alpine style and put together sets of eight-thousanders of their own.
The leading Polish mountaineers of the winter school
Jerzy Kukuczka
Kukuczka was the second person in the world to climb all fourteen eight-thousanders, but the figure hides the quality: most of those ascents he made by new routes or in winter, often without supplementary oxygen. His line with Wojciech Kurtyka on the south face of K2 was one of the most serious routes of the era. Kukuczka died on Lhotse in 1989 when a rope broke.
Krzysztof Wielicki
Wielicki took part in the first winter Everest, then made the first winter ascents of Kangchenjunga and Lhotse. He was the fifth person to climb all fourteen eight-thousanders, made fast and solo ascents, and later led Polish winter expeditions, including attempts on K2. His life links Zawada’s generation to the teams of today.
Wojciech Kurtyka
Kurtyka has less to do with winter firsts, but without him the Polish school would look one-sided. He pushed lightweight alpine style and, with Robert Schauer, climbed the west face of Gasherbrum IV — the “Shining Wall”. Kurtyka shows that the greatness of Polish mountaineering came out of an argument between two models: the big siege expedition and the small self-sufficient rope of two.
Maciej Berbeka
Berbeka made the first winter ascents of Manaslu and Cho Oyu. In 1988 on Broad Peak he reached the fore-summit, Rocky Summit, taking it for the main peak, and learned of the mistake only after he had come down. 25 years later he went back, and on 5 March 2013 he reached the main summit as part of the first winter ascent. Berbeka and Tomasz Kowalski died on the descent.
Artur Hajzer, Andrzej Czok and Leszek Cichy
Hajzer was a first ascensionist of Annapurna in winter and later created the Polski Himalaizm Zimowy programme, which trained a new generation. Czok climbed Dhaulagiri in winter and took part in the hardest expeditions, but died of high-altitude pulmonary oedema on Kangchenjunga. After Everest, Cichy carried on with a high-altitude career and completed the Polish version of the Seven Summits. In a team history every name needs a place of its own.
The modern legacy and the cost of winter records
Winter eight-thousanders did not end after 1988, but they became an international discipline. Shishapangma was climbed in winter in 2005 by the Pole Piotr Morawski and the Italian Simone Moro; Gasherbrum I in 2012 by Adam Bielecki and Janusz Gołąb; Broad Peak in 2013 by Berbeka, Kowalski, Bielecki and Artur Małek. K2 stayed the last unclimbed in winter until January 2021, when a Nepali team reached the summit.
Polish attempts on K2 produced experience and tragedy, but they give nobody the right to appropriate another team’s ascent. A national school is strong when it can acknowledge someone else’s result. At the same time the K2 finale bore out Zawada’s idea: winter Himalayism became a discipline in its own right, one the best mountaineers spend decades preparing for.
The cost of this history is enormous. The deaths on the descent from Broad Peak, and the deaths of Kukuczka, Czok, Morawski and many partners, cannot be used as proof that “heroic” risk was right. Winter narrows the margin of time and of strength; a summit does not cancel the duty to come back. Modern analysis has to separate objective difficulty from decisions that could have been better.
The Polish legacy lives not in a slogan about enduring at any price but in the preparation: the club school, the technical grounding, a precise division of roles and the ability to work towards one goal for years. For someone on a commercial expedition that is the useful lesson, rather than any attempt to copy a summit push made on a storm forecast.
Understand altitude before a big expedition
Start with the history and the programme of the 14 eight-thousanders, compare alpine and expedition style, then look at our current expeditions above 8000 m and the general list of the great mountaineers from around the world.
Questions and answers
Who first climbed Everest in winter
Krzysztof Wielicki and Leszek Cichy, on 17 February 1980, on Andrzej Zawada’s Polish expedition.
Why Polish mountaineers are called the Ice Warriors
The name comes from the run of first winter ascents of eight-thousanders in the 1980s and from the ability of Polish teams to work for a long time in extreme cold and wind.
Which eight-thousander was the last to be climbed in winter
K2. The first winter ascent was made on 16 January 2021, by a team of Nepali mountaineers.
Did the Poles use oxygen in winter
It varied. Supplementary oxygen was used on the first winter Everest; many other winter ascents were made without it. Results have to be compared route by route and report by report.
Sources
The main checks: the archive of American Alpine Journal, the material of Piolets d’Or, the Polish Mountaineering Association and expedition reports. The dates follow the generally accepted calendar winter and the historical reports.