In the autumn of 2000, while the world looked up in awe at Everest’s gleaming crown, a man stood on its summit — not just to climb it, but to descend it.

Davo Karničar, a Slovenian alpinist and extreme skier, clipped into his skis at 8,848.86 meters — the highest point on Earth. Around him, the jet stream howled. The snow was bullet-hard. The mountain loomed in its most unforgiving form.

But Davo wasn’t afraid.

He was ready.

On October 7, after four days of climbing, he reached the summit between 6:00 and 7:00 am, alongside his teammates Franc Oderlap, Ang Dorjee, and Pasang Tenzing. They had left Camp IV at the South Col (~7906 m) the night before, at 10:30 pm, ascending through the dark.

And then — as the sun rose above the Himalayas — Davo Karničar clicked into his bindings.

No one had ever done what he was about to attempt: a complete, uninterrupted ski descent of Everest’s South Face, from summit to Base Camp, without removing his skis. No walking. No rappelling. No retreat.

Skiing where few dare to ski.

The first turns were cautious, slicing through wind-scoured crust just below the Hillary Step. He followed the narrow crest down to the South Col, where he paused briefly to put on a specially designed helmet camera weighing 3 kg, then pushed on — filming his own descent from 8,848 meters to 5,300 meters at Base Camp.

Almost five hours after he began, he skied into Base Camp — having achieved what no human ever had.

He avoided the heart of the Khumbu Icefall, known for its shifting seracs and gaping crevasses, by traversing left — a wise detour that allowed him to complete the uninterrupted line in both elegance and safety.

Later, Davo reflected:

“We were very much surprised there was so much snow there! The Hillary Step, the steep crest, and huge amounts of snow which threatened to avalanche — these are the main characteristics of this first uninterrupted skiing from the top of the tallest mountain on this planet.”

Born in the Julian Alps of Slovenia, Davo had been preparing for this moment his entire life. The son of a mountain guide, he was skiing before he could properly walk. As a young man, he raced for the Yugoslavian national ski team, but his heart pulled him toward the high, wild peaks — to places where skiing was more survival than sport.

By the late 1990s, he had quietly begun an audacious project: to ski down the Seven Summits — the highest mountain on every continent.

Everest, though, was always the dream. And the trial.

He had attempted it before: in 1996 — turning back, not out of weakness, but out of discipline. Davo was not chasing fame. He was chasing perfection.

He was no stranger to serious descents. His skis had already carved down the Northeast Face of the Eiger, the East Face of the Matterhorn, and even Annapurna (8,091m) — a mountain notorious for taking lives.

But Everest was different. Bigger. Higher. Unforgiving.

In the years that followed, Davo quietly finished skiing all Seven Summits — Kilimanjaro, Elbrus, Denali, Aconcagua, Vinson, and Kosciuszko — becoming the first person in history to ski them all, completing the project by 2006.

He became a national hero in Slovenia, but stayed humble. Reserved. Always seeking the next silent line, the next moment of flow where body, mountain, and gravity moved in harmony.

Then, in 2019, while working near his home, Davo died in an accident — not on a peak, but while cutting a tree. A tragic irony for a man who danced so gracefully with death on the world’s highest slopes.

The mountains had taken him back.

But his legacy endures — not just in the record books, but in the clean, elegant tracks he left across the world’s greatest summits.

He didn’t climb Everest just to plant a flag.

He climbed it to descend with purity.

To carve a line that no one thought possible.

To prove that sometimes, the way down can be even more daring than the way up.

Davo Karničar didn’t just ski Everest.

He redefined what it means to come down.