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Whistler's Top Vertical Skiiers


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#1 teachme

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Posted 26 March 2017 - 07:31 PM

CBC just had a story about the Ski Leaders Board at Whistler. So far the skier with the most vertical meters this season has over 4.5 million vertical (13 million+ Vertical feet), second is 4.3 million.

Now my best ever was 20 000 meters in one day. Some of the leaders have done that everyday this season. Do other resorts have similar leaders' boards?

http://www.cbc.ca/ne...ition-1.4033187

#2 CH3skier

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Posted 27 March 2017 - 06:23 AM

 teachme, on 26 March 2017 - 07:31 PM, said:

CBC just had a story about the Ski Leaders Board at Whistler. So far the skier with the most vertical meters this season has over 4.5 million vertical (13 million+ Vertical feet), second is 4.3 million.

Now my best ever was 20 000 meters in one day. Some of the leaders have done that everyday this season. Do other resorts have similar leaders' boards?

http://www.cbc.ca/ne...ition-1.4033187

With Vail resorts, they track vertical by their EPIC readers at the bottom of every lift. They have a leader board for each resort or the EPIC top 100 for all their resorts. I have over 2 million vertical this year and my best day was 122K vertical ft at Keystone a few weeks back that took me right up till the night skiing close. :)

#3 egieszl

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Posted 30 March 2017 - 01:33 PM

I'm calling BS on this one both on the individual featured in the article and the 122,000 claim at Keystone in one day.

I've counted and tracked my vertical for 10 years now, down to every single lift ride. I have extensive experience with this. I ski Snowmass the majority of the time and I've logged 12 million vertical feet in the past 10 years. That's 474 days of skiing and 7,703 lift rides. I record every thing in an Excel spreadsheet.

On an average ski day I'm tracking about 20,000 to 30,000 vertical feet if I ski with others. Skiing with others kills your vertical, even if they're like minded experts. If I ski alone 35 to 40k is easy. Anything more than 50k is intense. My personal best is 64,867, skiing between 9:30am and 4:00 pm (average of 9,979.54 feet per hour). In order to do this at Snowmass you need basically no lift lines. You must ski specific, high vertical lifts (High Alpine 1,667 vert-5 min ride, Sam's Knob 1,200 vert-5 min ride, Big Burn 1,993 vert-8 min ride, Sheer Bliss 2,212 vert-9 min ride) on primarily groomed or smooth terrain over and over at high speed.

The longest operating day at Keystone is 8:30 am to 8:00 pm (11.5 hours) according to their calendar. You're telling me you averaged 10,608.7 vertical feet per hour? What lifts were you riding to accomplish this goal? I assume you didn't stop at all and there were no lift lines.

I'm not trying to make this about you, but I question the accuracy of the Epic readers.

This is how many times you'd have to ride a lift each hour to skl 10,608.7 vertical feet at Keystone.

River Run Gondola 4.61 times (50 minutes of ride time with no slows or stops)
Summit Express 4.61 times (43.8 minutes)
Peru Express 6.37 times (44.59 minutes)
Montezuma Express 6.68 times (40.08 minutes)
Santiago Express 6.63 times (29.84 minutes) <- best option for vertical at Keystone
Outback Express 7.16 times (42.96 minutes)
Ruby Express (39.78 minutes) <- second best option

The same thing for the Whistler-Blackcomb person. The article claims the person averages 25,000 meters (82,021 feet) per day. The operating hours on the mountain range from as low as 6 hours to as high as 7.5 hours depending on the season. I call bull s**t.

This post has been edited by egieszl: 30 March 2017 - 01:36 PM


#4 Peter Pitcher

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Posted 31 March 2017 - 02:32 PM

 egieszl, on 30 March 2017 - 01:33 PM, said:

I'm calling BS on this one both on the individual featured in the article and the 122,000 claim at Keystone in one day.

I've counted and tracked my vertical for 10 years now, down to every single lift ride. I have extensive experience with this. I ski Snowmass the majority of the time and I've logged 12 million vertical feet in the past 10 years. That's 474 days of skiing and 7,703 lift rides. I record every thing in an Excel spreadsheet.

On an average ski day I'm tracking about 20,000 to 30,000 vertical feet if I ski with others. Skiing with others kills your vertical, even if they're like minded experts. If I ski alone 35 to 40k is easy. Anything more than 50k is intense. My personal best is 64,867, skiing between 9:30am and 4:00 pm (average of 9,979.54 feet per hour). In order to do this at Snowmass you need basically no lift lines. You must ski specific, high vertical lifts (High Alpine 1,667 vert-5 min ride, Sam's Knob 1,200 vert-5 min ride, Big Burn 1,993 vert-8 min ride, Sheer Bliss 2,212 vert-9 min ride) on primarily groomed or smooth terrain over and over at high speed.

The longest operating day at Keystone is 8:30 am to 8:00 pm (11.5 hours) according to their calendar. You're telling me you averaged 10,608.7 vertical feet per hour? What lifts were you riding to accomplish this goal? I assume you didn't stop at all and there were no lift lines.

I'm not trying to make this about you, but I question the accuracy of the Epic readers.

This is how many times you'd have to ride a lift each hour to skl 10,608.7 vertical feet at Keystone.

River Run Gondola 4.61 times (50 minutes of ride time with no slows or stops)
Summit Express 4.61 times (43.8 minutes)
Peru Express 6.37 times (44.59 minutes)
Montezuma Express 6.68 times (40.08 minutes)
Santiago Express 6.63 times (29.84 minutes) <- best option for vertical at Keystone
Outback Express 7.16 times (42.96 minutes)
Ruby Express (39.78 minutes) <- second best option

The same thing for the Whistler-Blackcomb person. The article claims the person averages 25,000 meters (82,021 feet) per day. The operating hours on the mountain range from as low as 6 hours to as high as 7.5 hours depending on the season. I call bull s**t.

I don't know but what a great discussion, right up there with Wilt Chamberlain having slept with 20,000 women, do the math.
There used to be a competition at Taos for the most vertical in a day. In the olden days they had a high speed surface lift up Al's Run and I believe that someone got 90,000 in one day sunrise to sunset.You could look it up. About 20 years ago or so I remember someone skiing for 24 hours on the first YAN gondola at Keystone and getting some absurd amount of vertical, I think it may have been in SAM. I myself got 11,200 in 56 minutes on the old high speed Poma surface lift at Santa Fe so I guess it might be possible to get 122K on a very steep highspeed lift, perfectly groomed trail, nobody but you on the hill and everything perfect. But only for you and Wilt Chamberlain.

#5 SkiDaBird

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Posted 02 April 2017 - 08:18 PM

My personal best is just under 70k. That was almost precisely 4 times up Peruvian (Snowbird) an hour, for 7 hours, with about 3 on MBX and LC thrown in there.
Using your numbers for Keystone, that looks absolutely practical, although perhaps Vail's Fun Patrol wouldn't approve.

#6 CH3skier

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Posted 04 April 2017 - 07:18 AM

 egieszl, on 30 March 2017 - 01:33 PM, said:

I'm calling BS on this one both on the individual featured in the article and the 122,000 claim at Keystone in one day.

I've counted and tracked my vertical for 10 years now, down to every single lift ride. I have extensive experience with this. I ski Snowmass the majority of the time and I've logged 12 million vertical feet in the past 10 years. That's 474 days of skiing and 7,703 lift rides. I record every thing in an Excel spreadsheet.

On an average ski day I'm tracking about 20,000 to 30,000 vertical feet if I ski with others. Skiing with others kills your vertical, even if they're like minded experts. If I ski alone 35 to 40k is easy. Anything more than 50k is intense. My personal best is 64,867, skiing between 9:30am and 4:00 pm (average of 9,979.54 feet per hour). In order to do this at Snowmass you need basically no lift lines. You must ski specific, high vertical lifts (High Alpine 1,667 vert-5 min ride, Sam's Knob 1,200 vert-5 min ride, Big Burn 1,993 vert-8 min ride, Sheer Bliss 2,212 vert-9 min ride) on primarily groomed or smooth terrain over and over at high speed.

The longest operating day at Keystone is 8:30 am to 8:00 pm (11.5 hours) according to their calendar. You're telling me you averaged 10,608.7 vertical feet per hour? What lifts were you riding to accomplish this goal? I assume you didn't stop at all and there were no lift lines.

I'm not trying to make this about you, but I question the accuracy of the Epic readers.

This is how many times you'd have to ride a lift each hour to skl 10,608.7 vertical feet at Keystone.

River Run Gondola 4.61 times (50 minutes of ride time with no slows or stops)
Summit Express 4.61 times (43.8 minutes)
Peru Express 6.37 times (44.59 minutes)
Montezuma Express 6.68 times (40.08 minutes)
Santiago Express 6.63 times (29.84 minutes) <- best option for vertical at Keystone
Outback Express 7.16 times (42.96 minutes)
Ruby Express (39.78 minutes) <- second best option

The same thing for the Whistler-Blackcomb person. The article claims the person averages 25,000 meters (82,021 feet) per day. The operating hours on the mountain range from as low as 6 hours to as high as 7.5 hours depending on the season. I call bull s**t.


Starfire run off of Santiago lift all day with no breaks. Then went to the front side and skied the Gondola until last lift. I use Traceup ski app, it had me down for 117k but I know it shorted me a couple of runs. http://snow.traceup....019&vId=2493850

This post has been edited by CH3skier: 04 April 2017 - 07:20 AM


#7 egieszl

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Posted 06 April 2017 - 02:57 PM

I'm impressed. You skied the lift and run that I thought you'd have to do in order to accomplish this. Basically 7 rides an hour on Santiago. You skied Starfire 54 times- that's nuts.

I still think the Whistler-Blackcomb stuff is nonsense. Something doesn't add up.

This post has been edited by egieszl: 06 April 2017 - 03:01 PM


#8 Aussierob

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Posted 07 April 2017 - 07:40 AM

Not sure how you would beat the WB system. It records scans on lifts, and has a time delay so you can't stand at the bottom just swiping your pass. We record all the data so I'm pretty sure someone in IT could easily go into the system and see if what was being recorded was impossible to actually do.
Rob
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