Kilian Jornet has left the hustle and bustle of Chamonix for Norway, the country of his wife Emelie Forsberg, without losing the setting he loves so much and which sustains him, the mountains.
He is only 33 years old and yet he seems to have already had several lives. Born in Spain in Sabadelle near Barcelona, Kilian Jornet has won everything in the world of trail running. He has beaten some of the most prestigious speed records in the world's largest mountain ranges and has thus done the rounds of what competitive trail running has to offer. If the Spaniard is obviously still far from putting down his number, he now reserves himself for a few races a year and does not necessarily try to line up in the most prestigious competitions (he should not be at the start of the UTMB this summer).
After spending several years hiking the trails of the Alps from his headquarters in Chamonix, the athlete Solomon decided to leave France in 2016. Direction Norway, country of his partner and traileuse Emelie Forsberg (with whom he had two daughters). It is in the district of Romsdal that the world figure of trail running has settled down. A region located on the west coast of the country where the largest city (Molde) has only 25,000 inhabitants. In a video from her sponsor Suunto, Emelie talked about their life there and the new balance that had to be found in this family of four.
The Romsdal region is not well known to international mountaineers, yet it is full of beautiful mountains. This is where Kilian Jornet has found his new playground. Even though there are no peaks higher than 2,000 metres, the Spaniard enjoys exploring this new area and opening up routes on mountains that are so unknown or inaccessible that they don't even have a name.
Jornet knows the Pyrenees well as he grew up there with his parents, including his father who was a mountain guide at the Cap del Rec refuge at an altitude of 2,000 metres. After treading the trails of the Alps during his best years in competition, the ultra trainer has been discovering new massifs for the last five years. "It's not high mountain, but there's a lot of elevation change". he explained to the newspaper L'Equipe a few months after settling in. "As you start at sea level, you can quickly climb almost 2,000 metres. In the mountains, here, from 500 or 600 metres, it's open terrain, you can go anywhere. You don't need trails. It's always terrain like this, narrow, steep. It really makes you practice. " It didn't take long for Jornet to adapt to the new environment. The year after he moved in, he skied and ran the seven peaks of Romsdalen in a single day. That's 77km and 9,000 metres of positive altitude difference.
If trail running is the sport that made him known to the general public, Kilian Jornet is also a great lover of skiing, which he can continue to practice on site. "In Norway, you can ski from November to the end of May. There's really good snow and until April it's white all the way to the sea. What's nice is that you can move around, there's not one path to follow. As long as it's white, you can go. If you want snow and ice conditions, you have to have bad weather. You can't have the climate of southern Spain and good snow conditions at the same time. You have to know what your priorities are.
The Norwegian summits are not as demanding as those found in the Alps or the Pyrenees, but some mountains are nevertheless reputed to be formidable, such as Trollveggen. This 1,100 metre vertical face is the highest in Europe. In May 2019, his sponsor Salomon had unveiled the first steep ski descent ever made by a man on this mountain (see video below). Kilian Jornet signed there a new feat, which should not be the last one for the athlete who announced a short time ago the creation of a foundation in his name (which was joined by the Frenchman and another emblematic traileur Xavier Thévenard). In this way, he hopes to raise public awareness of the new practices of outdoor sports while respecting nature. A principle he has also applied to himself by announcing his intention to limit his air travel. The Spaniard has not finished exploring the Norwegian mountains.