The Matterhorn speed record was shattered on August 21st, 2013 by Spaniard Killian Jornet. He ran up and down it in 2 hours and 52 minutes. He’s also the same guy who shattered the Mont Blanc speed record this year at 3 hours and 33 minutes. He’s a machine. This isn’t exactly the kinda mountain the the average joe just ‘runs’ up an down.

The Spanish mountain runner Kilian Jornet has run up and down the Matterhorn, starting and finishing in the town of Breuil-Cervinia, Italy, in an astonishing 2 hours, 52 minutes round-trip. Jornet took more than 20 minutes off the previous speed record, set back in 1995 by Italian runner Bruno Brunod.

He climbed the Lion Ridge (southwest ridge) up the 14,692-foot peak. This is the normal route from the Italian side and is the shortest of the four great ridges on the famous peak, but it still requires more than 8,100 feet of vertical gain from Breuil-Cervinia. Jornet reached the summit in 1 hour, 56 minutes, 15 seconds.

56 minutes to run from the Matterhorn summit ( 4478m) to Cervinia ( 2009m ) looks like that! – Giovanni Caramia

This is an amazing feat. Hard to understand, really. It’s key that there is some video footage, otherwise we’d be asking a ton of questions about technical sections and what not. From the video we can see that he had no gear, he was in shorts, just running. He used fixed lines to ‘rappel’ down technical sections with no gear, just grabbing ropes and sliding down ‘em. Ballsy.

Our hats are off to Kilian Jornet. That is one incredible speed record on one spectacular mountain.