Climbing
We live in a world that is filled with standards and expectations where we measure the success of a person by quantitative numbers. We count how many victories, medals, and championships a team or individual may have and we attribute it to being successful. This is human nature and it does not look at whether an individual is a good person, but more specifically if they are successful in their respective sport or profession. There are individuals or teams in sports that have had tremendous success and longevity throughout history like the Pittsburgh Steelers, Los Angeles Lakers, and the New York Yankees to name a few.
However, those are team achievements; some individuals achieve great feats in sports that are immortalized in the history of sports as well. Kílian Jornet is a professional long-distance trail runner and ski mountaineer who just climbed 177 peaks in just eight days. Jornet averaged 22 peaks a day during that period and that statistic seems almost too much for the human brain and body to comprehend. “I had this idea in mind but wasn’t sure if it would be a feasible challenge or pure madness,” he said in a press release. The 35-year-old Spanish athlete climbed all 177 peaks in his home range of the Pyrenees and went from trail to trail by bike.
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Competing and overcoming obstacles is something that comes naturally to Jornet who has been successful in sports from an early age. Jornet was raised in Refugi de Cap de Rec, which is a mountain in the Catalonian Pyrenes, where he first entered a cross-country ski race at age three. He also won a fourth Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc title and set a new course record of 21:36:24 at Colorado’s Hardrock 100 in 2022. Jornet had already won this event in 2008, 2009 and 2011.
The journey to climb 177 peaks by Jornet began on October 2 at Frondella Peak which has an elevation of 10,075 feet. The Pyrenes Mountains are home to Jornet but it had been some time since he last visited some of the peaks. “I had climbed these peaks when I was 13 but did not remember them, making this a visually intense experience,” said Jornet. It took eight days for him to climb all the peaks and ended on the 10,315-foot Pica d’Estats which is the highest mountain in Catalonia on October 10. In total, Jornet climbed over 130,000 feet of vertical and crossed more than 300 miles throughout his journey. “It was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” said Jornet.
Jornet scheduled three events for the 2023/24 season which was announced on the NNormal website. They included a trip to the Himalayas in April and May, Sierre-Zinal, which is a mountain race in Switzerland in December, and a yet-to-be-revealed long-distance project later in the season. What Jornet does next is up to him, but he is focused on keeping a low carbon footprint. “Racing involves a great amount of traveling and knowing that my footprint will still be big, I want to minimize it,” said Jornet. Returning to the Pyrenes to accomplish this amazing feat was very special to Jornet and something that brought him back to his youth. “Rediscovering peaks that I had forgotten was a spectacular experience.”
