Rebecca Rees-Evans (United Kingdom)

Holder of the Womens’ World Record for the Fastest Ascent of Kilimanjaro

 

On 21st May 2005 Rebecca Rees-Evans attempted her first speed climb of Kilimanjaro, starting from Marangu Gate at around noon, following some administrative delays imposed by the park authorities. She summitted Kilimanjaro in the middle of the night; a little before 0200, in high winds and a snow storm. While the men’s record is attempted on an almost quarterly basis, there is yet to be a single challenger to Rebecca’s record.

 

Rebecca’s attempt was a timed ascent only, and she walked down the mountain. The banner photograph of Rebecca was taken during her descent from her record attempt.

 

Ascent-only time on Marangu (Tourist) Route, 21st May 2005

 

13 hours 16 mins 37 secs

unacclimatised, accompanied, supported

 

Overview of corroboration:

 

GPS profile / barometric altimeter & HRM / summit photo

NB: magnify JPEG images for details

 

GPS verification

 

1. download and install a free trial of Memory Map software here

2. download and open this low resolution geo-referenced Kilimanjaro map onto which the GPS-captured overlay files will be laid

3. download the women’s MMO files (womangps)

4. once overlay files are opened onto the Kilimanjaro map you’ll be able to hover your mouse over any point on the route and get a read-out of the athletes: time from start, instantaneous speed, altitude, etc. Garmin will confirm that these 3 dimensional positional files are not programmable and are therefore tamperproof

 

Heart rate / barometric altimeter verification

 

1. download and install a free trial of Polar Precision Performance software here

2. then download the athlete’s Polar heart rate / barometric altimeter files (womanheart)

3. note that during capture of Polar active files the altimeter cannot be recalibrated without terminating the file. Assuming an authentic starting elevation this feature makes these files tamperproof. Barometric altimeters will however have an error of up to 5% when not calibrated over a course of approximately 4,000m height gain