"Kilian Jornet, after struggling against the cruel heat, lack of sleep and painful limbs, pulverises the record for the GA20 non-stop in an astonishing 32 hours 54 minutes and 24 seconds"
Kilian crowned GR20 King, Conca June 16th 2009
The previous record was 36h53m set by Pierre Santucci in 2005.
These days it's very rare that I complete anything, but on Saturday 6th June 2009 I finally managed to complete my round of Corbetts I started 26 years ago with David Firth on Skye when we climbed Garbh-bheinn shortly after my 20th birthday.
Strangely it has taken me 6 years to finish off my final 11 Corbetts, partly because I couldn't face climbing Beinn Lair after umpteen failed attempts.
The catalyst for completing on Saturday was Manny Gorman who has been stampeding through the Corbetts since 25th April, climbing 127 in 43 days. I knew that Manny was due on Beinn Resipol, so I would need to go bag Beinn Lair the day before, to achieve the goal of climbing the hill together.
As things turned out, the ascent of Resipol was steeped in uncertainty over the future for Manny's Corbett Round, since Manny had crashed off his bike falling heavily on his knee on the descent for the previous hill that afternoon - Fuar Bheinn. There was sickening feeling that Manny's epic round could be facing a premature end after 6 hard weeks, with just 3 weeks to go.
The views from the summit with low late evening sunshine were quite magical and special, but the biting cold northerly wind gave a sense of urgency that we shouldn't hang around for too long. It was a late evening on the hill, and it wasn't until 11.30pm that the summit party of myself, Ellie, Brenda, Donald Smith, Dave Rogers, Stevie Bell and Manny were are all reunited with Shona, Manuel and Duncan back at the van in Strontian.
