reading c1 a biography of kilian jornet

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A biography of kilian jornet-cefr.

Read a biography of mountain runner Kilian Jornet, who climbed Everest in a day, to practice and improve your reading skills.

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Are you a proficient (CEFR level C1) English learner? You can practise reading in this part to improve your comprehension of lengthy, complicated books that cover a wide range of topics, some of which may be unfamiliar. Specialized articles, biographies, and summaries are examples of texts.

What likely comes to mind when you think of mountain climbers conquering Mount Everest are groups of climbers being led to the summit by Sherpa guides while carrying oxygen masks, supplies, and tents. You'd be mostly correct because 97% of climbers utilise oxygen to reach Everest's summit, which is 8,850 metres above sea level. At 3,500 metres, the majority of people experience breathlessness because to the thin air at high altitudes, and the vast majority of climbers utilise oxygen above 7,000 metres. A normal climbing party will consist of 8 to 15 individuals, with almost as many guides, and they will spend weeks ascending the mountain after arriving at Base Camp.

But without an oxygen mask or fixed ropes, ultramarathon and mountain runner Kilian Jornet Burgada scaled the summit by himself in May 2017. 

Oh, and it was completed in 26 hours. 

with foodborne illness. 

Then, five days later, he repeated the feat in just 17 hours. 

Kilian, who was born in 1987, has spent his entire life preparing for Everest. Since he was raised at the ski resort of Lles de Cerdanya in the Pyrenees, 2,000 metres above sea level in Catalonia, northeastern Spain, that truly does mean his entire life.Kilian was on skis while most kids his age were learning to walk. He completed a five-hour hike with his mother at the age of one and a half, fully on his own. When he conquered his first peak and took part in his first cross-country ski event at the age of three, he further distanced himself from his contemporaries. He had conquered a 4,000-foot mountain by the age of seven, and at eleven he completed a 42-day Pyrenees trek.

He claims that he began to "take it seriously" when he was 13 years old. He trained with the Ski Mountaineering Technical Centre (CTEMC) in Catalonia, competed, and worked with a coach. At age 18, he began to train alone for ski mountaineering and trail running, with only a few weeks off every year. He may put in up to 1,140 hours of endurance training annually, in addition to strength and technical sessions, race-specific training, and other activities. He prepared by ascending the mountain ten times until he knew every aspect of it, even where the sun would be shining at each time of the day, for his record-breaking ascent and descent of the Matterhorn.

Kilian Jornet seems practically superhuman despite barely getting seven hours of sleep per night. His resting heartbeat, which is 33 beats per minute as opposed to the normal man's 60 or an athlete's 40, is incredibly low. He also breathes more effectively than the normal person, inhaling more oxygen with each breath, and recovers from activity considerably more quickly thanks to his body's rapid breakdown of lactic acid, the acid in muscles that causes discomfort after exercise.

All of this is attributable to his upbringing in the mountains and to genetics, but it is his exceptional mental toughness that makes him stand out. He frequently sets tests for himself to see how long he can withstand trying circumstances in order to properly comprehend what his body and mind are capable of. For instance, he barely avoided renal failure after a 100-kilometer run in temperatures of about 40°C despite only consuming 3.5 litres of water. 

To detail all the competitions, prizes, and mountains he has scaled would require a book. And even here, Kilian's accomplishments are above average because he manages to find time to blog about his job and has written three books, including Run or Die and The Invisible Border.

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• ADVENTURERS OF THE YEAR

This Mountain Runner Scaled Everest Twice in Under a Week

Fueled by a love of the mountains and a drive to push his physical limits, Kilian Jornet achieved what no other mountain runner has before—two Everest summits without oxygen in about five days.

Kilian Jornet arrived to Everest base camp with the goal of setting a Fastest Known Time (FKT) for a roundtrip ascent of the world’s tallest mountain from the Tibetan side. What the 30-year-old mountain runner from Spain actually achieved on Mount Everest (8,848 meters) in May 2017, however, defies easy categorization.

“I came into this project not knowing if it was even possible to climb Everest without oxygen,” he says. “It was all about learning from the beginning.”

The headlining details are that Jornet reached Everest’s summit twice within a single week, first on May 22, then again on May 27. Both times he climbed solo, without the use of supplemental oxygen, without fixed ropes, and without reliance on supplies or support.

Climbing Everest without oxygen twice in the same week has been done once before, in 2007 by Pemba Dorje Sherpa, whose ascents were seven days apart. Jornet’s ascents, meanwhile, were separated by just over five days.

Mountain runner Kilian Jornet passes through Camp 2 during his first ascent of Mount Everest.

Prior to Everest, Jornet acclimatized by climbing Cho Oyu (8,188 meters), the sixth highest mountain in the world, on May 7. This means Jornet tagged three 8,000-meter summits within 20 days, a feat only eight other people have ever accomplished.

(He also had another acclimatization run, sometime between Cho You and his first Everest summit, which brought him above 8,000 meters, meaning he actually climbed to above 8,000 meters four times in just three weeks.)

“Seeing that I could make four ascents over 8,000 meters in less than one month was really the thing that I keep as the best experience,” Jornet says.

Jornet gets ready for his ascent of Mount Everest in May 2017.

Jornet pauses during his first summit of Everest.

A Complicated Record

When it comes to assessing Jornet’s Everest speed times, however, it gets harder to set the record straight.

Other climbers who have attempted speed ascents on Everest have typically begun timing their summit bids at Advanced Base Camp, at 6,400 meters. Jornet, however, initially made the decision to start his stopwatch at Rongbuk Monastery, where the paved Chinese road ends and the trail to Everest basecamp begins. This, in part, was an attempt to bring a fixed landmark to the often arbitrary practice of claiming Fastest Known Times.

Jornet’s time of 26 hours from the monastery, with an elevation of 5,100 meters, to the summit of Everest, at 8,848 meters, is extremely impressive, but also difficult to compare.

Further, Jornet had food poisoning, which slowed him down, especially above 7,000 meters. “I had diarrhea, vomiting, but I knew it wasn't going to kill me,” says Jornet. “It was good to see that, even with not feeling 100 percent, if you are physically strong, it's possible to just keep going.”

Nevertheless, Jornet was apparently dissatisfied with his initial performance because five days later, he went for a second speed attempt. This time, however, he started his stopwatch where other climbers began their speed ascents, the indistinct region called Advanced Base Camp.

Kilian Jornet climbs up a snowy slope on Mount Everest.

On this effort, Jornet claims to have climbed to the summit in 17 hours, which is about 15 minutes slower than at least two prior records. In 1996, Hans Kammerlander climbed without oxygen from ABC to the summit in 16:45—although he used on-mountain support. In 2006, Christian Stangl claimed a time of 16:43—and he had no support.

Of course, neither Kammerlander or Stangl had already climbed Everest five days earlier, as Jornet had.

Again, what Jornet achieved on Everest in 2017 defies easy categorization. Yet a deeper dive into the details surrounding his ascents begins to illuminate an accomplishment that can rightly be considered one of the most insane feats of endurance and grit the mountaineering community saw in 2017.

“High-altitude climbing has been stuck in pretty traditional ways for a long time, and Kilian is showing what's possible when you bring a new level of athleticism to the mountains,” says Adrian Ballinger, a California-based mountain guide who nominated Jornet for Adventurer of the Year.

“What makes [Jornet’s Everest ascents] so impressive was that it seemed like he didn't reach his potential last year. He had a terrible operator, he had stomach illness, his food was bad. All these things are basically beginner mistakes in the Himalaya. If he starts dialing in his system, I believe he could go so far beyond what we've seen.”

Runner Kilian Jornet descends Mount Everest after his first summit.

The sun shines on tents at Everest Base Camp.

The Gift of Quick Recovery

Jornet is physiologically gifted, to put it mildly. He has scored a V02 max of 92 ml/kg/min, one of the highest rates ever recorded. At 33 bpm, his resting heart rate is absurdly low. He trains over 1,200 hours per year, but sleeps just seven hours per night—a statistic that should boggle the mind of any serious trainer.

“We have just one life, and sleeping is a waste of time!” Jornet says.

• Nat Geo Expeditions

His ability to train constantly, virtually never take rest days, win back-to-back 100-mile races, and climb Everest twice in the same week without oxygen appears to hinge on his uncanny ability to recover quickly.

“Since I was a kid, recovery was one thing I was very good at,” says Jornet, whose parents were mountaineers. Since he was three years old, climbing to 1,000-meter summits in Spain with his family, Jornet has held an insatiable passion for moving in the mountains.

Part of Jornet’s pre-Everest training preparation was also mental. He would push himself on 30-hour runs, through the dark, cold, or other stressful situations in order to prepare his mind for difficult decision-making situations.

Jornet runs along a rocky ridge during the Hardrock 100 race in 2016.

“Emotional control is very important,” says Jornet, “especially in mountaineering. Euphoria can be just as dangerous as fear. You can be happy, but you need to be able to really not listen to these emotions when making decisions to keep going.”

“I saw firsthand the joy in his eyes at moving fast in the big mountains,” says Ballinger, who was on Everest at the same time as Jornet. “He obviously loved it and was willing to suffer really hard to achieve these summits.”

For Jornet, the superlatives and records truly do seem secondary to the fact that he managed to spend a month climbing and running free in an environment scaled to match his boundless energy.

“For me, this project was about learning a lot about climbing, logistics, and seeing what was possible,” says Jornet. “What I love is that when you finish a project, it just opens new doors to figure out what’s next.”

Related Topics

• MOUNTAIN CLIMBING
• TRAIL RUNNING

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