Mount Rainier climber sets new speed record

There's a new king of the mountain.

On May 9, mountain guide Simon Kearns stepped onto the asphalt at Paradise in Mount Rainier National Park - just 3 hours, 43 minutes and 52 seconds after setting off earlier that morning.

In the time it takes a well-trained runner to complete a marathon, Kearns, a guide for RMI Expeditions, hoofed it nearly 9,000 vertical feet to the summit of Mount Rainier and back. His breakneck pace set a new speed record for climbing Washington's tallest peak on foot, as verified by Fastest Known Time. Kearns sheared more than half an hour off the previous record, notched by Leavenworth-based athlete Alex King in 2021.

The 25-year-old Colorado native is no stranger to pounding out long distances in the mountains on foot. He grew up chasing his mountain guide parents around the Rockies, summiting peaks by age 4 and running trail races by 12. At that tender age, he had already set his sights on Rainier.

It always seemed like the biggest, coolest peak in the U.S. I could run up and down," he said.

In 2023, he notched the fastest known time on Mount Hood's south side route (also besting King) and competed in several elite-level races in the Skyrunner World Series. Those experiences bolstered his confidence to tackle Rainier, but he was thwarted on two previous attempts.

In July 2024, Kearns got caught behind a guided climbing party crossing a ladder over a crevasse, which cost him precious time. A year later, there were no snafus, but he came up four minutes shy of the record. With only his own fitness to blame on the second attempt, Kearns enlisted a coach and focused his training on a third time that would hopefully be the charm.

This year, spring rolled around with a stretch of clear weather ideal for climbing in early May. Kearns initially intended to ski - U.S. skimo racer Jack Kuenzle holds that record, set in May 2023 - but he broke his skis just days before his planned attemptwhile, perhaps surprisingly, climbing Mount Rainier rather than resting up for his big day.

"I tend to do a lot better if I don't focus on being recovered for my races and endurance attempts," Kearns said from Squamish, B.C., in between rock climbing sessions. "I go poorly if I try to taper. It's easier for me to just keep training at a high volume."

Still, having mostly backcountry skied in the preceding months, he had to make sure his running legs were ready, so he casually set a new fastest known time on the Mailbox Peak old trail on May 2 just to be sure.

Then, at 5 a.m. on May 9, after a week in which he had summited Rainier three other times, he laced up his approach shoes instead of his ski boots. The weather was ideal, with a freeze-thaw cycle that had firmed up the snow at most elevations but a warming trend that meant Kearns wouldn't get too cold at the summit.

After all, he was only wearing running pants, a thin long-sleeve shirt, a lightweight harness and a helmet. He brought microspikes for traction and poles for stability but no ice ax - something he had carried on previous glaciated peaks but found just added unnecessary weight. In his running vest he stashed two 17-ounce bottles of carb- and electrolyte-rich endurance drinks, the only calories he would consume the entire time.

With one earbud in, he queued up a playlist of French reggae - not a typical choice, he admits, as he generally prefers more upbeat music - and took off.

For Kearns, the hardest part of an endurance feat is getting out of the gate. "I tend to be really hard on myself and negative for the first 20-30 minutes, but I can often talk myself into a better headspace after that," he said. "Once I'm in the flow, I can turn my brain off and just focus on splits and the route."

And those splits were impressive.

In an hour and a quarter, he scaled Panorama Point and flew up the Muir Snowfield, averaging a 22-minute per mile pace before blowing past Camp Muir, where many mountaineers spend the night as they stretch their climb across two days instead of two hours.

After skipping across the Ingraham Flats at roughly 11,000 feet in elevation, he zigzagged his way through the crevasse-riddled Ingraham Glacier, an alpine realm that serves as his office. In the weeks leading up to his attempt, he and fellow RMI guides shoveled snow and installed wands to mark the route for the peak climbing season.

Passing early season climbers with ease and avoiding any bottlenecks at ladder crossings, Kearns set his slowest pace here, taking nearly 40 minutes to cover the route's steepest mile, which gains 2,200 vertical feet. With the effect of high altitude, even fit climbers can take an hour to gain just half that distance.

Kearns tagged the summit at Columbia Crest in a mere two hours, 34 minutes. When he stood on the roof of the Pacific Northwest, he was already half an hour ahead of the previous record holder.

"As long as I can make it down, the only way I won't get the record is if I fall in a crevasse or twist my ankle running down the snow field," he recalled thinking at the time.

Fortunately, no calamities befell Kearns on the descent. He picked his way down the Ingraham Glacier in less than half the time it took him to climb it, then clocked mostly 10 minutes or less each mile all the way down from Camp Muir. Although he ran down the snow field faster than some glissade, he sees his descent as his Achilles' heel in the elite world of mountain running.

"If someone's going to come break (my record) by five minutes, the downhill is where they'll do it," he said. "I was keeping it more dialed back there than trying to go full gas."

The finish line at 8:43 a.m. was a muted affair with just one friend there to cheer Kearns on, although other climbers, skiers, hikers and sightseers quickly picked up that something momentous had just happened. He didn't linger, heading back down to RMI's base camp in Ashford, where he lives with other guides during the climbing season. After downing his customary post-climb chocolate-espresso milkshake, he lounged around camp and drank some celebratory beers with his colleagues.

He described the rest of the Saturday as "lying in the sun and hanging out." "I got a lot of nice calls from friends," he said. "It was a sweet day.

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