In 1987, Jerzy Kukuczka became only the second person in history to climb all 14 eight-thousanders. He did it in under eight years — half the time it took Messner. He opened ten new routes in the process. He climbed four in winter. He did thirteen of them without supplemental oxygen. On homemade gear, with black-market money, behind the Iron Curtain.

Reinhold Messner wrote to him when he heard: "You are not second. You are great."

Two years later, on October 24, 1989, Kukuczka was leading a pitch on the unclimbed south face of Lhotse at 8,200 meters. The main rope was jammed. He clipped into a secondhand replacement he'd bought in a Kathmandu market. The rope snapped. His body was never found.

This video covers who Kukuczka was, what he actually accomplished, why almost nobody outside the climbing community has heard of him, and what a thin rope bought in a market tells you about the conditions he climbed in his entire life.