Killian Jornet's Everest summit might not have happened

Mike Rossi said he had photos of him all over the race course that prove he ran the VIA marathon, but he never needed to show them to anybody to prove he ran it. I don’t see why Jornet would need to prove anything either. He said he has the photos, that’ll be all a lot of people need to hear.

Bruce LaBelle wrote:

Have you checked whether the data collected on the GPS units used by Killian and Adrian were based on the same datum, and is it the same datum as that used in Openstreetmap’s map of Everest? Plotting GPS data on a map that is based on a different datum can result in significant vertical and horizontal misalignments.

Which happens exactly his many times with millions of recreational outdoor adventurers?

Care to elaborate why the import mechanism should treat the GPx later different from the project setting?

Don't try to build up a defense on that, because this can be debunked with e.g. QGIS in a fee minutes.

Here is a quick way to generate a topo map with full control over evey aspect inluding CRS:

http://www.qgistutorials.com/en/docs/working_with_terrain.html

Then of course one could just take the extent of the GPX track and find the distance of the maximum to the kat/lon published on

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Everest

27°59′17″N 86°55′31″E

scam_watcheroo wrote:

Ugh, the embedly doesn't show dropped points in Google Maps.

Speaking of Google, Mr. Scam. Do you remember the good ol' days of VJ Mattson? Or are you a Thorpe transplant?

From Irunfar interview

"So what I did… Kilian ended up crossing the finish line first in 5:14, which is ridiculously fast. Rickey Gates was 5:18 and change. I told Kilian when he initially crossed the line, “Hey, I may have to disqualify you because of cutting the course.” Kilian is a very gracious athlete and he said, “Yes, it’s ok. I understand. It’s ok.” I was pretty psyched about that. He was really gracious. He’s a great kid, because I’m old. At the same time, I waited a little while to decide what the final decision would be. I talked to 10 to 20 people. I got their insight and input. The most important input I got was probably was something that Pikes Peak did years ago when a few Europeans came over and they cut corners. I don’t know if they technically won the race, but they cut the corners. They didn’t disqualify them, but what they did do is they didn’t pay them the prize money. I said, “You know what? That’s probably a reasonably fair thing to do.”

To be honest with you, I hated to do this. I hate to be in this position. Some people will think I’m a bad guy for the decision that I made, but honestly, I think it was kind of the right decision. I couldn’t say “DQ. You’re out. Done. See ya next year maybe? Maybe not.” I really want this race to continue as a Skyrunning race. I want it to continue. I made the ultimate decision of going with what Pikes Peak did, and we paid Rickey Gates as the winner. Rickey also beat Kilian to the top, so he gets $1,000 bonus. He was also under the record. So Ricky gets $4,000, and, unfortunately, Kilian doesn’t get any money. I still gave Kilian Jornet the win, because as a Skyrunning Series program, I really want to keep that. I don’t want to diss him out on that whole thing. That’s kind of how they race in Europe and in all the other races, so I let that ride.

Kilian, again, was a very gracious athlete. He’s a really cool guy. Rickey felt good about it. A lot of the other spectators that know what my decision was, they thought that was good. Ultimately, the bottom line is that Rickey Gates will get the course record, technically the course record, because he followed the course. Again, it’s such a hard decision to make. Kilian was very gracious about it. So it is what it is."

Do you even know who Karl Meltzer is?

People are becoming soft. Rules are rules.

On trail and xc races, I know I'm not allowed to cut corners so I don't.

How is it relevant? I read the interview. "I really want this race to continue as a Skyrunning race.".

Paraphrased: "He's a great guy, I just can't DQ him. It'd be bad publicity for my race because they cut switchbacks in Europe".

I get it. It's a tough choice, but in my opinion the wrong choice. They didn't DQ the winner of the Dallas marathon either. They don't DQ someone aided across the finish. Because it's feel good story and gone viral now. We don't want to hurt anyone's feelings with a DQ, despite that being the rules.

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=8578274

Would this happen in the Olympics? If someone jumped the curb cutting the course would they allow it because "they do that in Europe". If someone is pulled across the finish, do they still get a medal? I don't think so.

You're right, it's not relevant to this conversation about Everest.

I don't see why photos at summit weren't published immediately. Like the can make the claim about "saving it for a movie" or whatever, but that doesn't make sense. THE BEST MARKETING PICTURE FOR THE MOVIE IS A PICTURE OF THE DUDE ON THE SUMMIT! Regardless of gps data and people fighting about it on here, Jornet had a gopro and a sat phone and hasn't managed to produce a phone call or a photo; that's fishy af.

Also side note, dude is either a demigod or a liar if he claims to have summited at 9pm (especially with his light gear, the wind, and the cold).

One last thought, attacking the credibility of the messenger (hur dur the person shouldn't be anonymous) is using an ad hominem fallacy. Nothing said about the author changes the sketchiness of the gps data, or the weird fact that there are no summit photos.

Kilian is the Mayor of the Mountains, because he "may or may not" have summited.

why are there so many sad and frustrated people in this board

Using WGS84 I get a maximum distance of 54 meters to the Summit of Mt Everest as published (with few decimals) on Wikipedia.

The code is here:

https://nbviewer.jupyter.org/github/cprior/GIS-stuff/blob/master/application/physical/notebooks/MrJornetEverest.ipynb

cpr wrote:

Using WGS84 I get a maximum distance of 54 meters to the Summit of Mt Everest as published (with few decimals) on Wikipedia.

That 54 meters appears to be the lateral as a bird flies distance. There should also be a couple hundred meters of vertical elevation gain.

Haha. I can feel the zeal of the amerifats. Understandably tho. Amerifats cant produce great people like kilian anymore. Your greats are trump like

Correct, this is a distance calculation on a sphere, not on topology.

Plus the coordinates of the peak as published on Wikipedia I cannot verify or otherwise judge their validity.

As usual with GPS data I did not consider the elevation.

I think it was a very good piece of information from your side that the logging was every 10 seconds.

Is it a proper way to download with the bookmarklet, by the way? (I never used Strava until this morning.)

It was a surprise to me that Suunto indeed makes the 'datum' configurable. Is that for their own map server / movescount?

Because for sure this would not affect NMEA output of the GPS receiver, and certainly not alter its "GLL" geographic position in latitude and longitude.

Here is my concern with this BS about exclusivity for a documentary crap - the "photos" are currently being doctored just like Kim Kardashian's @ss. Such a shame. They are scrambling. Seb, everyone at Salomon, you name it. I don't think he reached the summit the first or second time. I think he got as close as possible for his skill set and confidence.

Like they did with the moon landing!!!

I exchanged emails with one of the most knowledgeable guys related to all things Everest. He said, too, that the author is Dan Howitt, a well known conspiracy theorist who tried to discredit other good climbers as well.

Regarding the 2012 Speedgoat 50k course-cutting incident, this race was part of the Skyrunning series, where all the other races in the series allowed cutting switchbacks (AKA "european rules"). The idea being that the runner gets from point A to point B taking whatever route he thinks will get him there quickest. In other words, part of race strategy is devising an optimal route, relative to the course terrain and the strengths and weaknesses of the athlete.

At the time, it was not documented anywhere that switchbacks could not be cut at Speedgoat and this information was not in any way relayed to the athletes prior to the start of the race. Though it is the convention to follow switchbacks in American trail races, I think it was reasonable to assume at the time that since Speedgoat was part of the Skyrunning series, that the same rules would apply there as all the other races in the series. Maybe it should have occurred to Jornet to question whether or not this was the case since he was in a different country, but IMO it is not safe to conclude that he knew that he was cheating when he cut switchbacks. The article indicates that after he was told at mile 20 not to cut switchbacks, he did so anyway. However, it's not clear how this instruction was relayed and whether or not Jornet understood it. His English is not good (at least in 2012) and considering that he was presumably hauling a** when he was warned, he may not have had the wherewithal to absorb what he was told.

Personally I would not be comfortable using this to establish a pattern of dishonesty as the author in the OP article does.

A broken clock is still right twice a day. Whatever Dan's background may be, we are evaluating the evidence and judging the merits of the evidence and so far Dan looks much more convincing than Kilian.