Outside’s Guide to FKTs on the Seven Summits

Published July 3, 2023 08:49AM

On June 5, Jack Kuenzle, a 27-year-old former Navy SEAL, set a new fastest known time (FKT) on Alaska’s 20,310-foot Denali, going airstrip to airstrip in a stout ten hours and 14 minutes. His effort bested the existing FKT held by Swiss-Ecuadorian climber Karl Egloff by an hour and a half. Kuenzle has been steadily picking off FKTs on popular snowy peaks in the lower 48 over the last year: Hood (1:31:31), Rainier (3:04:31), and Shasta (2:30:48). This year, he set his sights on Denali.

“It’s Denali, it’s the highest peak in the U.S., it’s ultra-prominent, and it’s skied a lot from the summit,” said Kuenzle, while hiding from a thunderstorm in the bathrooms at Chautauqua Park in Boulder, Colorado, after finishing a run on Green Mountain, a week after he set the record. “Having a competitive record was also a really big motivation…It’s a couple steps up from what I’d been doing.” To Kuenzle, due to the peak’s scale and high altitude, Denali felt like much more of an alpinism record and made his other records look more like “skimo racing in a resort.”

The Seven Summits, the highest peak on every continent, each have their own individual challenges and require different skills, but they do share one element that sets them apart from most other objectives—high altitude. The shortest peak is Puncak Jaya/Carstensz Pyramid at 16,023 feet. (We’re including both 7,310-foot Kosciuszko and Puncak Jaya on this list because both count for Seven Summits records, but the latter has emerged as the consensus summit as it’s the highest peak on the continent of Oceania while the former is the highest on mainland Australia).

A few athletes best known for trail running are now concentrating on making bids for speed records across all Seven Summits, like Tyler Andrews and Fernanda Maciel. Kuenzle, who ticked off more than a few FKTs on trails before getting bored and deciding to develop his skills on more technical, mountainous terrain, says he has no interest in attempting FKTs on any of the other Seven Summits after Denali. Nor is he planning to defend his new Denali record. “I just don’t know if I’ll ever get that lucky on weather again,” he said on the phone.

As far as FKTs go, the variability of conditions and other factors often make the records difficult to compare cleanly. Kuenzle would rate his weather as a 10/10. He basically wore the same outfit the entire time (tights and a sun hoody), which is indicative of how favorable conditions were. On Strava, Kuenzle wrote that while his effort was 90 minutes faster than Kilian Jornet’s, he is “in no way 90 minutes faster than him on this terrain.” Given all of these variables, says Kuenzle, it’s important that style between attempts is matched. Meaning things like whether an effort is unsupported (no outside help) or supported (help allowed), but mainly that the location of the start and finish are the same. On Denali, the airstrip structures at basecamp move every year, which is why Egloff, Jornet, and Kuenzle all started in slightly different spots. Additionally, while Jornet and Kuenzle attempted the record in the same style and both used skis, Egloff employed a different style and did the whole thing on foot.

The website FastestKnownTimes.com (owned by Outside’s parent company Outside Inc.) verifies and chronicles FKT attempts in the U.S. and many around the world. The most popular ones (including California’s 211-mile John Muir Trail and the 42- or 48-mile Rim-to-Rim-to-Rim route in the Grand Canyon) are running/hiking paths on well-marked dirt trails, but many of the routes on the Seven Summits are far more difficult or have unique challenges that set them apart and require specific skills.

Below, we break down the FKTs on these peaks as they stand and dig into the challenges each one poses. While most of these FKTs were done on foot, a few of them were done on touring skis—like Denali and Elbrus. Over the years, as gear gets better and lighter and streamlined tactics continue to be honed, it’s likely that the times will continue to get faster. “The worst case scenario is 50 years from now, all these records still stand because nobody ever attempted them again,” says Kuenzle.

Denali

Kuenzle, who cut his FKT teeth on gnarly long-distance routes like the 66-mile Bob Graham Round in the UK (beating Kilian Jornet’s time by just shy of 30 minutes), had never climbed Denali before. On the day of his record attempt this year, the highest he’d been on the peak was 17,000 feet. While guided parties climb the mountain on foot, Kuenzle’s attempt was on skis. Kuenzle took Karl Egloff’s 2019 record, and Egloff had bested Jornet’s 2014 record by only four minutes. Katie Bono, the female record-holder, set her FKT in June 2017.

That’s not to say that Denali isn’t a huge challenge. It’s a serious peak that has fatalities every year from its various hazards: crevasses, high altitude, icy conditions, and severe weather. Guided parties typically spend at least two weeks on the peak dragging heavy sleds, ferrying loads, acclimatizing, and waiting for a weather window. “It’s intimidating. The terrain is just so huge,” says Kuenzle, adding that given the breadth of the route (spanning 33.61 miles round trip from around 7,000 feet to over 20,000 feet), it’s almost a given that you’ll encounter challenging conditions somewhere on the route.

Everest

Everest is the world’s highest peak and the only summit that requires spending time in the so-called “death zone,” or above 26,000 feet where the oxygen level is too low to sustain human life (climbers typically try to minimize the time spent above that altitude). Everest is also tall enough to contend with the jet stream, which means that the top of the peak can be subject to winds as high as 70 miles per hour.

Lakpa Gelu Sherpa holds the record for the fastest ascent of Everest, with a time of 10 hours and 56 minutes, climbing from Base Camp to the summit via the South side in Nepal on May 25, 2003. In 2004, Pemba Dorje Sherpa claimed that he completed the same route in 8 hours and 10 minutes—earning a Guinness World Record title that stood for 13 years. But Lakpa Gelu challenged the veracity of Pemba Dorje’s claim, and ultimately a Nepalese court sided with Lakpa Gelu. Pemba Dorje was stripped of his record and Lakpa Gelu’s speed record is now acknowledged as the FKT on the mountain’s South side. Ada Tsang Yin-Hung notched the women’s FKT on this route in May 2021.

Kilian Jornet holds the record on the North side, which is accessed via China and sometimes poses bureaucratic hurdles. On May 22, 2017, he went up the North Face from Base Camp without fixed ropes or supplemental oxygen (both of which Lakpa Gelu and Pemba Dorje used), and then returned to Advanced Base Camp in 26 hours, setting an FKT on a route that previously had no speed record. There’s been some dispute over Jornet’s feat, however, due to what some call inadequate verification.

Aconcagua

Route: Most recent attempts have been on the route from the Horcones trailhead to the summit and back

Aconcagua is not a technical summit, but its high altitude and frequent harsh weather make it a difficult undertaking. The climb is pretty straightforward, but it’s not a gimme. There’s no guarantee that commercial parties, who spend a few weeks on the mountain, will get a weather window. It is often cold, dusty and windy, but you could also get snow.

Tyler Andrews set his FKT this February, breaking Karl Egloff’s record by about 27 minutes. Dani Sandoval set hers in January 2018.

Kilimanjaro

Kilimanjaro, a non-technical climb with a slightly lower elevation, is often considered the easiest of the Seven Summits. The FKT requires athletes to run a little over a marathon (26.4 miles) with almost 14,000 feet of elevation gain at altitude, but one of the biggest hurdles is logistical. Climbers have to have a local guide and a permit to climb. When Tyler Andrews set the FKT in March he wrote about a “bureaucratic nightmare” with his guiding company that required him to leave the park and re-enter it, which “nearly cost us the opportunity to even attempt this record.”

Elbrus

Elbrus is a snow-covered peak that’s moderately technical. The route is about 15 miles with almost 11,000 feet of elevation gain. Egloff set his record while he was racing the Elbrus Skymarathon, in which 500 athletes run to the summit of the peak and back every year, in May 2017.

Vinson

Route: Round trip from base camp to the summit and back via the Branscomb Shoulder

Of the Seven Summits, Vinson is the most remote. Getting to Antarctica typically requires flying to Punta Arenas, Chile, and then taking another weather-dependent flight to the snowy runway at Union Glacier. Vinson is not particularly tall, but it’s snowy and steep in places, and requires crampons, an ice axe, and roped travel. One of the most difficult parts of the climb is contending with the extreme cold (as chilly as negative forty degrees) and harsh weather conditions on the continent. Self-care is crucial as errors, like exposing bare skin for too long (or at all), can result in frostbite.

Fernanda Maciel set her FKT, the only known speed record on Vinson, in December 2022.

Carstensz Pyramid (Punta Jaya)

Carstensz Pyramid, on the south coast of New Guinea in Indonesia, is a high-altitude rock climb and the most technical of all the summits. It entails scrambling, fifth class rock climbing up to 5.6, an airy Tyrolean traverse, and a series of rappels to descend. In addition to the physical difficulties, there are other challenges that have nothing to do with climbing. There’s the fickle equatorial weather to deal with, and political and bureaucratic problems. When he climbed it, mountaineer Alan Arnette wrote that he heard of climbers being “stranded at remote airports, porters abandoning teams, malaria and more.” We haven’t found any records of the FKT on this peak. (Note: if you have this record, please reach out and we will update this piece.)

Kosciuszko

We’re including Kosciuszko because it’s traditionally been counted as one of the Seven Summits—it’s the highest peak on mainland Australia—though mountaineers are increasingly considering Carstensz Pyramid as the true highest point on the continent of Oceania. Kosciuszko only takes four to five hours to hike on an easy-to-follow path. On the main route you can take a 15-minute chairlift to get to the start of the climb. On the other side, hikers can follow an old road that goes almost all the way to the summit. The FKT we have listed here is actually for 15 peaks in the area (Kosciusko was the 11th peak on the attempt) so we include it given the absence of a straight Kosciuszko FKT. (Note: if you have this record, please reach out and we will update this piece.)