Eight on the Summit..
Most people who climb Kilimanjaro take a week or more to reach the top, stopping for days along the way so their bodies can adjust to the thin air.
In 2025, a group of thirteen skipped all of that. One reached the summit. This October, eighteen people from France and Italy made the attempt.
The climb was led by Leonardo Pelagotti, Oxygen Advantage® Master Instructor. He has run a marathon in under three hours with tape over his mouth, held static apnea for five and a half minutes in a pool, and was a breathing coach for the French and Chinese teams at the Paris 2024 Olympics.
Most of the group weren’t athletes or mountaineers, and many had never been on a mountain like this before. They climbed from 1,700 metres to Uhuru Peak, at 5,895 metres, in 22 hours of continuous walking, through the day and the night, mouths taped and breathing only through the nose.
Counting the way down, it came to 46 kilometres, 4,200 metres of climbing up and down, and around 36 hours of effort. Eight reached the summit. Everyone made it past 5,000 metres.
From jungle to ice..
The climb began in dense, humid rainforest, where the group settled into a slow, steady pace and moved from camp to camp with breathing breaks along the way. Other trekkers stopped to ask the guides why this group had their mouths taped. Even the Tanzanian guides and porters, who know the mountain better than anyone, watched in disbelief.
As the hours passed, the forest gave way to rock and thinner air. Then night fell. Temperatures dropped as low as −15 °C, the wind picked up, and with every metre gained there was less oxygen to work with. Not everyone could continue, and those who did describe every step as a test.
And then, right when they needed it most, the sun rose above the clouds. Several of the team have written that it’s the moment they’ll remember longest.
“The breath can lead us higher. The breath can bring us up. And that’s for sure.”
Leonardo Pelagotti, after the first climb in 2025
Ordinary people, on purpose..
That was the point. The challenge was designed to find out how far everyday people could go by learning to breathe better and manage their effort, and the answer arrived one step at a time.
The group is clear that the strength wasn’t any one person’s. It came from eighteen people who waited for each other, encouraged each other, and shared the cold, the tiredness and the silences on the way up.
The documentary..
Filmmaker Fabien Moine was with the group the whole way, and a documentary about the expedition, altitude and human adaptation is on the way. We’ll share it here when it’s released.