The suspense will not have lasted long. Fifteen days after beginning his challenge of climbing the 82 four-thousanders of the Alps, Kilian Jornet has already accumulated 59 summits. If all goes well, next week he will successfully complete a project that will smash the record of 2008, when guides Franco Nicolini and Diego Giovannini completed the Alpine crossing in 60 days. The Catalan ultra-runner’s journey is not strictly a solo trip, nor in absolute autonomy, but a scrupulously organised journey to favour his speed. However, Jornet only moves thanks to the momentum of his legs: he does not use ski lifts or motor vehicles to move from one place to another. When he hits the asphalt, he pedals with a road bike.
A team of half a dozen people, including the climber’s own mother, is responsible for filming his progress and supplying and assisting him when he reaches the road in the valleys. There, two vans welcome him and watch him eat like crazy “for an hour and a half straight. It’s impressive to see the amount of food he eats. Afterwards, he goes to sleep in the van until he gets up to start a new stage,” explains his team. When he wakes up, he chooses the appropriate clothing, the technical equipment he will use or mounts his bicycle and travels to the chosen point where he will change the two wheels for some shoes and set off up the slope. He pedals without weight. And he carries a minimalist backpack in the mountains.
Kilian Jornet has been accustomed to drinking very little during his training sessions in the past, and can go without drinking for many hours. In the high mountains, there are no fountains: there is snow, but he has to melt it with a stove and add salts to hydrate himself. Instead, he starts with a litre of water, administers it, and buys water in the refuges he passes by. “In some refuges, he feels bad when the guards want to treat him to special food. He asks to eat the same as the rest and sleeps in shared rooms. In this sense, he always maintains a very humble profile despite the interest his figure arouses as he passes by,” explains his team.
Jornet expends around 6,000 calories during the longest stages, but this is a figure that says very little, as explained by his doctor, Jesús Álvarez: “Based on the previous work carried out and knowing what his microbiota (microscopic flora) and physiological state are like, our objective is not to count calories, but to maintain physiological functions according to the inputs we receive daily (the athlete provides saliva and stool samples) and from here individualize the diet based on the needs of macronutrients or micronutrients. Basically, what we try to do is compensate for the altered physiological states that are produced by activity, sleep deprivation, stress, etc. In these situations it is more about making a physiological, metabolic and neuroendocrine restitution and not so much about adding calories: what can be absorbed, how and what will benefit it, having a very clear relationship with the state of the microbiota and the intestinal capacity that favors the metabolism and use of food. The human body is not like a train with coal in it: it burns so much and moves so far. The body assimilates or not depending on different states.”
Kilian Jornet
In his backpack, Jornet carries some super-calorie bars that he made himself at home in Norway and that he alternates with sandwiches and tasty morsels made by his mother. In the shelters he eats whatever is available. If during his training he is not used to eating anything, during the race he has learned to eat conscientiously. In fact, his team estimates that he has not lost weight in the last two weeks. “When he climbed 177 Pyrenean ‘three-thousanders’ in 8 days a few months ago, Kilian lost 7 kilos of weight. It was a very different trip, much more radical, demanding, severe. Here in the Alps, the experience is different. Kilian is very serene, calm, he allows himself more hours of sleep, he is not obsessed with the stopwatch, he does not compete against anything or anyone,” his companions say.
The Catalan athlete sometimes travels accompanied by other mountaineers or guides, who help him in certain areas, either technically or by strangers. Thus, his journey is not entirely solitary either. “Kilian values the company of these friends, especially because he is physically in perfect shape, but sometimes he feels the psychological hardness of the challenge, a certain mental fatigue,” warns those close to him.
The Alps are particularly dangerous in August, with ground conditions deteriorating rapidly, with huge fields of crevasses, unstable rock terrain, many objective dangers to avoid and routes that are suddenly altered, forcing Jornet to change his itinerary and plan on the fly, altering his planned schedule. “We never know when he will arrive. We just wait, we send him a message when we think he is taking too long, and we receive his reply with relief. When he finally arrives, he tells us about his adventures while he eats. If we compare the plan for the crossing that he sent us six months ago with what he has ended up doing, the differences are substantial,” his team points out. The ground conditions and the weather are in charge, which adds stress and forces the Catalan to rely on anticipation and his ability to adapt.
To date, Jornet has completed 852.98 kilometres, 59 four-thousanders, 196 hours, 43 minutes of effort spread over 12 stages (15 days) and a positive elevation gain of 56,237 metres. The twelfth stage allowed him to cross the Grandes Jorasses ridge, a journey between the wild French north face (where many of the best pages in the history of mountaineering have been written) and the more pleasant Italian side. The final stretch of his challenge will cover an essential part of the places where mountaineering was born, grew and evolved… until reaching the era of high speed.
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