World’s Highest Marathon
February 2026…after months of planning and organising with our partners High Mountain in Chile, we set off to Copiapo and the Atacama Desert to begin the expedition to climb the highest volcano in the world (above sea level) and run the distance of a marathon from the top with a team of sixteen people. The aim was to attempt a new world record for the highest point to start a marathon.
Ojos del Salado is 6893m (22,615 feet) and the highest above sea level; some people will know that Mauna Kea in Hawaii is the highest from base to summit, but a third of it is underwater. Other iconic volcanoes include Mount Fuji in Japan, Mount Etna on Sicily which is active, and Mount Kilimanjaro, which at 5895m was the location for the previous world record for the highest run from the top.
Ojos del Salado means ‘Eyes of the Salty One’, referring to the round turquoise lagoons and the salt pans that surround the mountain. It lies on the Argentine-Chile border and like most volcanoes it sits alone, but it’s not an outlier. It is one of twenty volcanoes over 20,000 feet that form the Andean Volcanic Belt that stretches the western edge of South America. The most well known is probably Chimborazo in Ecuador.
Ojos is an impressive beast of a mountain for its size, but I think the surroundings are what make it very special and unique. The Atacama Desert is one of the driest parts of the world, and the flora and fauna lives a tenuous and fragile existence, at one with the harsh environment. Mineral deposits, notably copper, have unfortunately brought mining activity that is inevitably putting unsustainable pressure on this landscape, so I think it’s a privilege to visit and still see such stark beauty. I love the simplicity of mountain life, but this expedition really sets that lifestyle into sharp relief.
I had been asked by BecomingX to organise and lead the expedition. BecomingX had recently run the World’s Deepest Marathon down a Swedish mine, so this expedition was an obvious inverse to the marathon concept but a very different type of challenge. Aside from the physical challenge of walking up a big mountain and then running 42.2 kilometres from the top, the logistical task of transporting, accommodating and feeding a large group of people in a place like the Atacama was no mean feat.
I turned to my friend Guillermo at High Mountain based in Chile who I work with on all my mountain trips in that part of the world. I like Guillermo a lot (right, with me), he has the same mentality as me when it comes to expeditions. He understands the hard work that goes into the prep and he’s focussed on safety and professionalism and he’s been around long enough to have seen it all. His guides who I work with are just fantastic; super fit and experienced, full of fun and self-deprecation, and they just love being in the mountains.
Paul Gurney at BecomingX is someone I’ve known for many years now, and he’s always impressed me with his positivity and high ambition! Never one to be shy of making an approach, he managed to secure sponsorship from Ford in the form of some very fancy off-road vehicles and also the budget to make a documentary.
This then led to a documentary team of seven coming along on the trip, through Chrome Productions. These are people at the top of their game, having been involved with many famous adventures programmes on television; our expedition was frankly small fry to people of this calibre, but nonetheless they were so focussed on squeezing the best imagery, audio and content out of every shot. When you watch a series like ‘Expedition’ on television, it’s easy to forget just how good the film crew are. It was such a pleasure to work with them.
The expedition team including runners and a support group who helped with driving the vehicles and would hopefully be on hand to provide back-up for the runners as they came off the mountain and ran across the desert to the finish point which was quite close to our base camp on the shores of a laguna. Some people I knew from previous expeditions, like Nigel Vardy who is such a likeable fellow and an asset to any team, but most of the group were new to me. There were some experienced and knowledgeable mountaineers and some amazing runners, and in the finality everyone got on with each other very well. It’s very easy to write those words, but it’s not an easy thing to achieve! I personally really dislike competitive expeditions, and certainly on these bigger peaks it’s a key consideration to work together. Having lived much of my life in East Africa, I’m motivated by the Ubuntu philosophy which says “I am because we are”. One of my main jobs was to try and set an example for that egalitarian approach.
While the aim of the expedition was to achieve a world record, which all sounds very grand, my aim was to get the whole team to the start point in a physically healthy state, and mentally motivated to give it a go. I concentrated on the basics of making sure everyone was eating, sleeping and drinking well, and also acclimatising well. Every individual acclimatises at different rates as our bodies adapt to the hypoxia of being at altitude. I needed everyone to reach the same optimal point on the same day with no early dropouts due to sickness. Again, easier said than done. Many people assume that if you’ve done a lot of high stuff before, you’re ‘programmed’ to respond well to a lower concentration of oxygen in the air. But there are many factors and even after working on high mountains for thirty years now, I am never complacent about my own metabolism.
So we did a lot of resting, a lot of eating and drinking and sleeping, and we went on easy hikes… and we waited for our bodies to adapt. Years ago there was a belief that you needed to push your body higher and higher each day, to kind of prove to yourself that you were acclimatising. I remember my first Everest expedition in 2000, it was a kind of requirement to ‘touch’ Camp 4 at 8000m before you were considered ready to try for the summit. By 2011 and my sixth Everest expedition, nobody was doing that except for the Sherpas, who didn’t need to prove anything to anyone anyway.
I have climbed Ojos five times before, and I remember on my first trip there we would sleep at the 5500m Tejos refuge before summitting. The summit success average in those days was about 50%. Now, nobody sleeps at Refuge Tejos; everyone sleeps low at the laguna and the summit success rate is now 80%. So on this trip we spent a lot of time at the laguna, where thankfully there are hot pools to bathe in, toilets, wifi and lots of other people around to meet. The heat is pretty extraordinary, but essentially it’s a comfortable base camp.
Ojos del Salado is not a particularly difficult mountain to climb; like many volcanoes it has a symmetrical cone shape with low gradient slopes. The summit of Ojos has a rocky broken rim that involves some scrambling and climbing for about 90 feet, UIAA grade II/III (YDS5.6), which at sea level would be a bit of fun. At nearly 7000 metres it’s quite a bit of puffing! But essentially it’s a high altitude walk.
I have taken five groups up Ojos before, including my wife (then fiancee), and each time the conditions were quite different. Always cold and windy though, which is typical of the ‘Venturi effect’, as prevailing westerly winds track across the Andes and are funnelled across the high passes in this high desert environment. These relentless Andean wind patterns, high altitude and lack of atmospheric insulation or cloud cover, means it will always be cold and windy and hard work.
Added to that the dryness of the Atacama Desert itself; the low humidity and lack of moisture means almost no snowfall, and very little cloud cover. During the day, the high peak is exposed to freezing air and the solar radiation causes sharp temperature spikes around the base. Diurnal temperature range can be fifty degrees which is very debilitating on the human body. Add to that the windchill which is typically -35°C on a typical summit day where the ambient temperature is -10° C to -15° C. I knew very well that all of this, plus climbing through the night, would be the biggest challenge. Everybody had good clothing, but there is much benefit in being economical and efficient with your movement, and adopting a certain mindset when it comes to these kinds of challenging moments. But the simple reality is that at high altitude your body cannot produce enough heat, the muscles struggle with less oxygen, the breathing is not as effective, and everything is hard. Having got everyone to the start point of the climb, I really had no idea how everyone would react during those key hours going to the top. As a mountain guide you never quite know!
The night of our planned summit was pretty normal as far as Ojos summits go, Guillermo and the other guides were confident. We drove up in our Ford vehicles to the refuge Tejos and started the hike at around 11pm. The path is not difficult to follow, but inevitably with such a big group we were moving slowly. Several people at the back started to get cold, so at one of the stops they moved to the front with two of the Chilean guides.
We carried on and the wind picked up as we came round on to the shoulder, a steady 40kph into our faces, and obviously quite cold. That, with the strenuous activity as we came to 6200m, meant that some in the group started to feel dizzy and groggy and slowed down even more. I started walking up and down the line, checking people, and meanwhile I saw the lights of the front group pulling ahead, they looked strong. That was five of the marathon team and two of the film crew plus three guides.
Over the next hour or so, nine people turned back and three of my guides plus myself went with them. My focus had to be on their safety and I had oxygen in the cars and the hut at Tejos to rest in. I had a Chilean paramedic there too, so he and Guillermo shuttled people back to the refuge and I went back up the path to meet any others potentially on the way down. Thankfully I was feeling quite normal and warm. After two more hours going up again I didn’t meet anyone so there was no point carrying on, the front group would be coming into the crater now and very unlikely I’d catch up with them now.
This was true, the five marathon had popped over the lip into the crater with dawn on them now, but the film crew had stayed put and taken a rest behind some rocks. The team were now filming on their phones and the film shows the wind picked up and there was windblown ice. However as you walk round the rim to the final climb the wind stops and they were able to start the rock scramble without all that noise.
I decided to go back down to the refuge at Tejos and see how everyone else was, now the sun was up and I was happy that nobody else needed help coming down. I knew also the rest of the film crew would be coming up and they had a massive lens that could pick up individuals on the high slopes. I also knew we had quite a wait ahead of us. The team of five would summit late morning, and then they would start the marathon. We’d agreed they would not be racing each other of course, and at that altitude there wouldn’t be much running, but it was all up to them now.
Back at the refuge I decided to send people down to the laguna. Safety in the Tejos hut was one thing, but it was still 5500m and after a whole night without sleep I knew that everyone needed rest. They took the vehicles and went down with the Chilean guides, and I stayed at the hut with the remaining film crew. And we waited.
We saw them coming off through the lens as they popped over the shoulder and into view, tiny figures zigzagging down the huge slope. The drone went up and we got some great footage of them boot sliding down.
