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At 90, a Retired Doctor Just Became the Oldest Person Ever to Climb Kilimanjaro
On the morning of July 13, 2026, a 90-year-old retired doctor walked onto the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro.
Courtesy World Wide Trekking
His name is Dr. Art Ulene, and the walk lasted 15 days.
His name is Dr. Art Ulene, and the walk lasted 15 days.
At the top, standing at roughly 19,341 feet, he ate birthday cake. Then he danced.
That summit made him the oldest human known to have climbed the highest mountain in Africa.
The record he broke, and the one he was chasing
The prior record belonged to Anne Lorimor, an American who summited Kilimanjaro in July 2019 at 89 years and 37 days.
The Lorimor record was officially recognised by Guinness. The Ulene claim, at 90 years exactly, awaits Guinness verification.
That verification typically takes up to three months, per Guinness policy. The National Park Service reportedly had a representative on the mountain to witness the summit.
According to reporting by Alaska News Source, the ascent was confirmed the same day by his daughter, Dr. Valerie Ulene.
Who Dr. Art Ulene actually is
Ulene is a retired OB-GYN. He is also, for a certain generation of American viewers, a familiar television face.
He served for years as the medical correspondent on the NBC TODAY show, translating clinical research into practical advice for a huge audience.
That professional background is not decorative. It is the entire reason he framed this climb the way he did.
The frame he keeps using in every interview
In a conversation with NPR before the trip, Ulene laid out the sentence every runner and every ageing athlete should copy down.
Most people, he said, worry about their lifespan. Smart people worry about their healthspan, which is how many of those years are spent in good health.
His stated ambition is for the two numbers to be equal, meaning he wants to be in the best possible health right up to the last day.
Kilimanjaro was the loudest way he could think of to make that argument in public.
Courtesy of CareScout
The climb itself, in his own words
This was not a heroic sprint up the mountain.
The full trip took 15 days.
Eleven and a half of those were spent going up. Four were spent coming down.
The group carried a folding chair for him. Roughly every hour, they set it up and he sat for five to 10 minutes to recover.
He told The Spokesman-Review that his legs simply would not go any faster and that pace, not fitness, was the ceiling.
The hardest part was not what most people assume
Ulene has said the hardest part of the climb was not the altitude or the cold.
It was lifting himself over large rocks on the technical sections. The descent was almost as tough, because a 90-year-old body has to actively brake every step to avoid tumbling.
His summit line, remembered afterwards, is the one worth repeating. He kept telling himself that all he had to do was put one foot in front of the other.
That is not a motivational poster. That is the mechanical reality of ultra-endurance at any age.
This was not his first Kilimanjaro
Ulene had climbed the mountain twice before.
The first time was in 2011, at 75, with his wife Priscilla. She was 72.
He attempted it again in a subsequent year and turned back before the summit. That returned attempt is why the 90th-birthday climb was not a first-time act, but a settled score.
The relevant lesson for older runners is quiet but important.
Attempts that end short of the goal are not failures. They are altitude acclimatisation for the future.
Why this belongs on a running website
Ulene is not a distance runner in any formal sense. He is a doctor, a skier, and now a record-holding climber.
The reason his story matters here is that he is a living illustration of the same principle that drives every late-life running profile on the site.
The runners who keep going into their 80s and 90s share the same governing idea. Ulene just chose a mountain to say it out loud.
The company he is now in
At 90, Ulene joins a small, extraordinary cohort. The site has covered a few of its other members.
There is Mike Fremont, who ran a 6-hour 35-minute marathon at 90, and there is Emma Maria Mazzenga, who broke the over-90 200-metre world record.
Every one of them is running the same experiment Ulene ran. Push the ceiling of what an older body can do, and watch it move.
What actually let a 90-year-old climb this mountain
There is a temptation to file this under "special genetics" and move on. That is not what the evidence shows.
The list Ulene keeps naming is closer to the standard longevity checklist than most journalists let on.
- Decades of consistent aerobic base. He skied, hiked, and stayed active without long dormant stretches.
- A functional obsession with health, not a wellness aesthetic. As a doctor, he tracked the numbers most people ignore.
- Deliberate goal-setting into old age. The Kilimanjaro attempt at 90 was announced in advance, in public.
- Pacing over pride. The chair-every-hour strategy is the reason he summited when a younger, faster ego would have blown up at 15,000 feet.
The pattern the running literature keeps confirming
The science on running counteracting the effects of aging points at the same mechanism. Sustained aerobic loading protects cardiovascular capacity, bone density, and mitochondrial function far past the point most people assume.
Ulene did not run 26.2 miles at 90. He did something arguably harder over 15 days.
The underlying physiology is close to identical. Cardiovascular economy, muscular durability, and stubbornness.
What is next for a 90-year-old record holder
The answer, unsurprisingly, is not retirement.
Ulene has already bought a season ski pass at Deer Valley in Utah. He plans to take lessons from an 80-year-old instructor.
He has also said he wants to keep inspiring people to live as well as they can at any age, while carefully noting he is not telling every older person to climb Kilimanjaro.
The offer he is actually making is smaller and more useful. Pick a big enough goal that it forces the daily choices, and the daily choices will do the rest.
The line from the summit worth stealing
Asked how someone climbs Kilimanjaro at 90, Ulene gave the answer that every runner already knows.
One step at a time. That is the mechanical answer, the philosophical answer, and the training answer, all in the same sentence.
Ulene is 90. He has already announced he is going down mountains next, on skis.
The healthspan-equals-lifespan idea used to sound like marketing. On July 13, 2026, a retired OB-GYN turned it into a Guinness application at 19,341 feet.
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