Four days after his victory in the Sierre-Zinal race, Kilian Jornet has embarked on a new and original project named Alpine Connections: crossing the Alps via peaks over 4,000 meters (there are 82 of them). No one knows if Kilian Jornet intends to climb them all, but he wants to push back the limits of ultra-endurance, in a mountaineering version. Kilian Jornet already climbed twelve 4,000 peaks.
It’s a project that only the Catalan ultra traileur, mountaineer and skier has the secret to. Last year, despite being injured for part of the summer, he completed an ultra-endurance crossing of the Pyrenees (after an attempt to climb Everest to 8,200 meters). Kilian Jornet is no stranger to the Pyrenees, where he grew up, but where he wanted to push his physical and mental machine as far as possible. This is once again the aim of the Alpine Connections project: to go as fast as possible, on foot or by bike, across the Alps, linking peaks over 4000 metres.
No one knows if or when Kilian Jornet will complete his project. It’s late in the season in the Alps to be climbing some of the 82 4000-meter peaks. Some of the 4000+ peaks in the Mont Blanc massif, whether in France or on the Italian side, are very tricky to reach in August. But Kilian Jornet is still a long way off. He has chosen to start his Alpine tour in Switzerland, like most of the rare athletes who take on