Career
Born in Katowice, his family origin is Goral. On 18 September 1987, he became the second man, after Reinhold Messner, to climb all fourteen eight-thousanders in the world. He is the first man who made the first winter ascents of three eight-thousanders: Dhaulagiri with Andrzej Czok in 1985, Kangchenjunga with Krzysztof Wielicki in 1986 and Annapurna I with Artur Hajzer in 1987.
Only Simone Moro did better than him, after climbing the fourth over-8000 peak in winter in 2016.
Along with Tadeusz Piotrowski, Kukuczka established a new route on K2 (the so-called "Polish Lincolnshire"), which no one has ever repeated. Kukuczka is widely considered among the climbing community to be one of the best high-altitude climbers in history.
He ascended all fourteen eight-thousanders in just seven years, 11 months and 14 days - He held the world record for shortest time span to summit the eight-thousanders for nearly 27 years until May 2014 when Kim Chang-ho beat his mark by one month and eight days. During his career, 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 (called Ice Warriors).
He climbed all summits, except for Mount Everest, without the use of supplemental oxygen. Kukuczka died attempting to climb the unclimbed South Face of Lhotse in Nepal on 24 October 1989.