RECORD BREAKERS
“I JUST FELL IN LOVE WITH THE IDEA TO CLIMB EIGER NORTH FACE IN THE MORNING AND GO ROCK CLIMBING IN THE AFTERNOON.”
P Kilian running in Chamonix.
I wanted to get Kilian and Ueli together for a beer but, well, you try co-ordinating one man who’s constantly running in the mountains or travelling to places like Norway and the Dolomites to race with another who’s constantly climbing, training or travelling to places like Berlin and New York to speak at events. It's a good job they're both super-fast to fi t it all in.
So, you'll have to imagine them sipping pints and comparing notes on moving fast in the mountains: Kilian describing his technique as “a fl owing dance between my body and the terrain, trying to communicate through my steps what nature is communicating to me” and Ueli responding that he likes to “control, climb smooth and get things done in a proper style.”
see that bright spark in his eye when we talk about future plans but I know this will haunt him for the rest of his life.” I want to ask Ueli about Everest and if he'll go back, but you have to build up to these things. Instead I ask what he loves about speed solo-climbing. It seems safer. The answer is effi ciency: “I just fell in love with the idea to climb Eiger North Face in the morning and go rock climbing in the afternoon.”
In person the ‘Swiss Machine’ is friendly with piercing, straight-talking blue eyes and the confi dence of someone whose actions speak louder than words. Steck suggested we meet on a train journey he had to make. It's how he slots journalists into his busy schedule.
I was intrigued to compare Ueli with Kilian. Was there a common gene, diet or training secret to moving faster than was previously imagined possible in the mountains?
But the world's fastest mountain climber and its fastest mountain runner turned out to be polar opposites. Like Kilian, Ueli walks his talk, literally. While Kilian is very natural and passionate in the way he talks and runs, Ueli is extremely effi cient and direct, like his climbing. In some ways Kilian is stereotypically Spanish, and likewise Ueli typically ‘Swiss’. Both seem very comfortable with who they are. I guess, a sign that they are living life the way that’s right for them. Both say fi nding their true path in life is what they’re most proud of. For Kilian this involves eating whatever he wants, including quantities of chocolate, perhaps dipped in Nutella. Ueli, meanwhile, employs a dietician amongst his team of state-of-the-art training advisors, which also includes a mental coach and fi tness trainer. Jornet waves a dismissive hand at the idea of heart-rate monitors – he just knows how his body feels. He doesn't care to remember where he placed in many races. Steck always trains and climbs with a heart rate monitor, because each session is targeted to a precise goal, logged and analysed. The reasons the two like lightweight kit is, again, natural outlook versus scientifi c. “More than moving fast, I like moving light,” Kilian explained. “When you move light you need to move fast to not be cold. I like to be just with shorts, why do you need more?” Ueli has a different view: he's a self-confessed “tech freak”, and if an accident ever stopped him climbing, might get into lightweight kit development instead.
I'm just thinking, that's the big difference – while Kilian succeeds by moving in harmony with the mountains, Ueli fi ghts to overcome them with ruthless effi ciency – when Ueli draws me back to the present moment, his story. “I like the effi cient movement of speed soloing. You feel your body, your legs pushing, your arms pulling. You are 100% focussed. No future, no past. It's a very nice moment,” he ponders. I picture Ueli, his ice axe and crampons like natural extensions of his limbs as he speeds up walls of ice. Wondering how he got there, I ask about his fi rst climbing experience.
As with Kilian, there were early signs Ueli would be a prodigy in his sport. He never top-roped. His very fi rst climb as a child was on the sharp end, and he grew up fascinated by the Eiger, which he could see from home. After gaining a place on the Swiss Junior Climbing Team, he quickly got bored. When the teenage Ueli climbed his fi rst alpine peak, the Sheideggwetterhorn, he thought: “Now this is a real mountain.” Then his Eiger obsession really took off. Steck spent a year training for his fi rst ascent of the 3,970m peak. While out running with a full rucksack, he’d pause to scale telegraph poles with ice axes. Over the following years he worked through every worthwhile route up the Eiger and added a new route – The Young Spiders – up the North Face. He also ticked off increasingly hard alpine classics and rock routes up to 8a, often solo, and put up new test pieces in Nepal and Alaska. Sponsorship deals offered more time to train, and he refocussed on the Eiger. Solo. At speed. Ueli trained harder than ever to crush the Eiger North
Face speed record. In 2004 he climbed it in ten hours, and it took three years to whittle that down to the new record of 3hr47. Afterwards, curiosity led him to the Swiss Federal Institute of Sports to fi nd out how fi t he was. They told him: not very! Compared to Olympic athletes, who train very scientifi cally, even top alpine climbers were in the dark ages. After a year working with a team of Swiss Olympic training experts, Ueli returned to the Eiger, stripped nearly an hour from his own record and had found his niche. “Mountaineering is still not very developed from an athletic prospective,” Ueli tells me. “This is what I am interested in.” His training was, and remains, complex. Periods he works on strength or base endurance. Mental training sessions. 10-12 training sessions a week, up to 1,000 hours a year. (I make a personal note: mountain runners had better hope Kilian doesn't decide to train like an Olympic athlete.) Steck then gave up soloing hard rock routes. If he continued, he calculated, he'd eventually kill himself. Instead, he decided to redefi ne what was possible at speed on what he calls “average technical terrain.” From 2008-9 Steck also broke solo speed records on the Grandes Jorasses (2hr20)
26 | 70TH ANNIVERSARY | FOR BRITISH CLIMBING AND WALKING SINCE 1944
PHOTO: SEB MONTAZ.
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