On May 27, ski mountaineer in just 17 hours, . He left advanced聽base camp, on the northern, Chinese side of the mountain, at 2 a.m. and reached the peak at 9 p.m. This was just five days after he set a fastest known time up the mountain from base camp, completing the journey in 26 hours.聽
Let鈥檚 start with this: Kilian Jornet is a freak of nature. Compare his ascent, which was made without the use of fixed ropes or supplemental oxygen, to that of climber Adrian Ballinger, who , also without oxygen. Ballinger is a talented聽mountaineer. This is his seventh summit of Everest and he has six other summits on 8,000-meter peaks. Ballinger left advanced聽base camp on May 24th and it took him three days to reach the summit. That鈥檚 not because he鈥檚 weak鈥攈e鈥檚 an extraordinarily strong climber. (It takes many climbers four days to make it to the summit.) That鈥檚 just to say that Jornet is absurdly gifted.
Jornet鈥檚 most recent attempt isn鈥檛 exactly an apples-to-apples comparison of his initial climb, which left from base camp rather than advanced base camp, a difference of 4,265 vertical feet. Even still, he just barely missed setting the fastest known time from advanced base camp to the summit, a record held by Hans Kammerlander, who did the route in 16 hours and 45 minutes in 1996.聽But that shouldn鈥檛 take away from the fact that Jornet just ran 8,000 vertical feet up the world鈥檚 highest mountain鈥攁 mountain on which it鈥檚 hard to breathe, period, for the last third of it鈥攊n less than a day.