KILIAN JORNET
We believe in taking our time up Mt. Kilimanjaro to maximize each group’s odds of reaching the summit, typically spending 7 or 8 days on the ascent alone.
Still, it’s always exciting to keep track of just how fast the world’s elite athletes can conquer a mountain. Often these are endurance runners, with altitude being the ultimate challenge.
So the latest record just set on Mt. Kilimanjaro is a truly stunning one, because endurance runner KILIAN JORNET was able (at age 22) to accomplish every hour what the average climber does in a day when he ran up to the 19,340-foot summit in 5 hours 23 minutes and then back down to base camp before the clock had hit 6 hours 29 minutes.
Jornet’s time beats two records: First, he beats Kazakh runner Andrew Puchinin’s ascent timeof 5 hours 24 minutes 40 seconds by just a minute, which is, yes, insanely close. It also took Puchinin 4 hours 14 minutes to return to base. By contract, Tanzanian Simon Mtuy spent 6 hours reaching the summit but had held the roundtrip speed record of 8 hours 27 minutes, which Jornet absolutely killed with his 6.5-hour time.
According to an article in French on the feat, the day also featured a true show of sportsmanship, with Mtuy waiting for Kilian at base camp to embrace and congratulate the new record holder.
Most mountaineers will tell you not to climb Kili in fewer than 5 days. What havoc this exercise may wreak on Jornet’s body may take years to truly know
