Kilian Jornet grew up in the Pyrenees Mountains of northern Spain, the son of a man who operated a backcountry hut for mountain travelers. Since then he has made himself at home in mountain ranges across the globe as one of the world’s foremost ski mountaineers and trail runners. He is not fond of cities.

“If I am in the mountains — here in Colorado, in Nepal, it doesn’t matter — I can go places where I have never been and feel at home,” Jornet said Tuesday in Denver on the eve of embarking on an uber-adventure in the Rockies. “If I’m in a town, 30 minutes from where I live, I would not feel at home. It’s foreign. When I am in the mountains I can express myself and I can imagine things. It feels like where I’m meant to be.”

Even as his 72-year-old father is in the middle of a solo trekki

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