At 90, Dr. Art Ulene Became the Oldest Person to Climb Kilimanjaro

On the morning of his 90th birthday, Dr. Art Ulene stood on the roof of Africa while his guides cut him a cake. He had just reached the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, 19,341 feet above sea level, and in doing so had become the oldest person ever to climb it. The previous mark, recognized by Guinness World Records, belonged to Anne Lorimor, who summited at 89 years and 37 days in 2019. Ulene, who reached the top on July 13, cleared it with room to spare.

Not His First Time on the Mountain

This was not a novelty attempt by a first-timer. It was Ulene’s third successful summit of Kilimanjaro in 15 years, and his fourth try overall. He first climbed it in his seventies with his wife, Priscilla, and the couple reached the top together twice. On a later attempt, at 85, he turned back at 17,000 feet. “I didn’t feel well and was not going to let my ego get in the way of my health,” he told Business Insider.

The record idea started, by his account, almost as a dare. “Someone said, ‘Do you know the world record is 89 years old? Why don’t you do this for your 90th?'” he told Runner’s World. “It was almost like a joke. And I said, ‘Fine, I’ll do that.'”

The Plod

The retired obstetrician-gynecologist, a former medical correspondent on NBC’s Today show, was clear-eyed about what 90-year-old legs could and could not do. Where his earlier climbs took nine days, this one was planned for 15, eleven going up and four coming down, with permission to pitch camp anywhere on the trail the moment he was too tired to continue. A support team of more than 20 carried the food, the tents, a toilet and a foldable chair, and made camp each night with singing and dancing.

They called him Babu, the Swahili word for grandfather. “The social support from these young, strong, energetic, joyful young men kept me going,” he told Runner’s World. The method itself was not complicated. “You put your left foot forward, and then you put your right foot in front of your left foot,” he told NPR. “And then you repeat that 55,000 times.”

It was not painless. A medication he takes affects his balance, so he had to be careful on the rock, and inside his tent the water in his bottle froze solid. He has since applied to Guinness to make the record official, and says this will be his last extreme climb.

Health Span, and “Peak Span”

The climb was the message, not the point. Ulene, who smoked until he was 33 and did not start exercising seriously until 50, has spent his later career on health promotion for older adults, now in partnership with the aging-services company CareScout. He wants people to stop treating decline as inevitable. “Most people worry about their lifespan,” he told NPR. “Smart people worry about their health span, that’s how much of your life you’re in good health.”

He has a third measure he cares about even more. “For me, the issue is increasing my peak span,” he told Runner’s World, meaning the stretch of life spent operating at or near one’s best. “I want to operate as close to my peak potential as I can until the day I die.”

His training reflected it: three or four gym sessions a week on the strength machines, plus climbing 50 flights of stairs in his hiking boots, worked up from 10. On the days he did not want to move, he bribed himself. “If you just get out the door and walk to the nearby gelato place a mile and a half away, you could have a small gelato,” he told NPR. “That gets me right out the door.”

What He Actually Wants You to Do

Ulene is emphatic that the point is not the mountain. “I’m not telling people they should climb Kilimanjaro,” he told Runner’s World. “I am telling people they should get out of their front door, walk around the block, find a hill in town.” He points people toward the plainest version of the same idea, the sort of first-step-then-another approach that turns a walk around the block into a habit.

He built the rest of his advice on the evidence he trusts: physical activity first, then good nutrition, enough sleep, managing stress by learning to say no and clearing clutter, staying socially engaged, challenging the brain, and going easy on toxins like alcohol. None of it has to be perfect, he says; he still skips a workout or eats something he shouldn’t. It is the accumulation that matters.

He is not the only person rewriting what later life can look like. This year Roy Allen walked into Ottawa race history at 100, and endurance records keep falling to unlikely people, like Trish Patterson’s 425-mile Three Peaks run. Ulene is not slowing down either. He has renewed his ski pass for the winter, and in December he plans to return to Tanzania with his two youngest grandchildren, aged 13 and 15, to camp in the foothills of Kilimanjaro and go on safari. His new motto, he told Business Insider, is simple enough: “Live up to your potential, not your age.”