The Case of Kilian Jornet: Factitious Heroism
Authors: Howitt Dan 
Published: September 2021

| None of the hundreds of millions of people, from May 2017 to the present, who were presented reports that Kilian Jornet reached the summit of Mt. Everest twice in May 2017, uncovered the intricate, multifaceted fraud of his. This is a case of Factitious Heroism, a condition which is discussed by Dr. Marc Feldman. Kilian's factitious presentation was done in order to motivate others to conceive of him as being a sports hero, and concurrently, in order to receive immense and enduring gratification via innumerable worldwide media-reports, and in order to obtain financial improvement.| This case is akin to my Factitious Disorder By Proxy and Factitious Heroism autism cases, and aspects of my physics and mathematics case.| Kilian Jornet reported reaching the summit of Mt. Everest, via the North Route, solo, without oxygen, and without fixed-ropes, on May 22 at 12:00am, and again on May 27 at 9:30pm. For both of his climbs, he has no summit photos, no summit video, and no summit witnesses. His GPS tracking for the 27th begins at 8650m and descends from there. His GPS tracking for the 22nd gives a highpoint elevation reading of just over 8500m. For both of his climbs, he was a multitude of hours from the summit when he turned back. For both of his climbs, he did not call anyone via his satellite-smartphone from the summit, nor near the summit. 4 climbers, of 2 separate climbing groups (of 2 climbers each), 2 from the USA and 2 from India, and who were separated from one another by several hours, and who climbed to the summit from Camp 4 on May 21-22 on the same route as Kilian, would have each been passed by Kilian during his descent, and within inches or feet of each other, and would have each seen his headlamp a multitude of times as he ascended and descended. The 2 Indian climbers came forward to the media to report that it is impossible that Kilian summitted at 12:00am on May 22 because they would have seen him as described above. The 2 USA climbers indicated to me that they hold this opinion as well. Over 1 year later, Kilian submitted claimed summit-photos and claimed summit-video, for both of his claimed summits, all of which are 100% dark except for minimal illumination of his face and upper torso, as he did not use his headlamp nor GoPro light to illuminate any of the surface of the mountain, which could have easily been done to show that he was at the summit – he could have illuminated the highly recognizable summit surface (its general shape), and the abundant summit-flags and other summit-objects. For all of Kilian's other mountain climbs and mountain runs, for his several year Summits of My Life project, he has abundant summit-photos, summit-video, summit-witnesses, and complete and accurate GPS tracking. For both of Kilian's Everest attempts, he began his ascents during hours of the day that are the opposite to what all other climbers do, namely in the late afternoon and early evening. Climbers do not climb during these times because the increase of temperature, the presence of sunlight, and the increase of wind, cause changes to the mountain surface such that chance of rock-fall, ice-fall, and opening-crevasses increases dramatically, and become extreme dangers to one's life. Kilian claimed to not climb with fixed-ropes for either climb. However, his self-taken GoPro video on May 27 shows that he used fixed-ropes. Despite that it is the highest elevation video of himself on Everest, he did not provide the video to any media, nor on his website. Apparently it was inadvertently provided to a French media who did a YouTube video about Kilian, which was never linked to nor mentioned by any other media. Kilian stated that his Suunto watch battery failed for his May 22 climb shortly below the summit (several hours below the summit). However, Suunto watch batteries last for many years. Over 1 year after my case-report began to be disseminated and discussed in many countries and by minor-media and major-media, Kilian reported to a forum-user of LetsRun.com, Andy Tavin, that he has GoPro GPS tracking for both of his climbs. Kilian took about 2 months to provide the data to the Andy. Andy wrote his own case-report on the matter in early 2019, using much of my case-report for his own report. Unlike Kilian's above Suunto GPS data, which was auto-uploaded to his Suunto Movescount.com account-webage, Kilian has never provided his claimed GoPro data to any media, nor published it. It was likely manually contrived post-controversy. Of Kilian's claimed summit-video, he likely went back to the rock-band that he videoed himself at previously (mentioned above), at night, and took the video, as all aspects of the video are essentially identical to his above video, except that it is dark. There are other aspects of my case-report that are not summarized above.| All of my other references are listed within the below case-report.