13,640

There are those who might call me a competitive person. I never think of myself that way, though I do compete with myself on some things.

Skiing is one of those things. I like to challenge myself, tacking new places and runs that I don't get to very often, and skiing more/farther/longer than previous years.

I am silly enough to keep skiing stats. I used to report my stats here before I started contributing to the Powderwatch.com blog. Now that I write over there, I don't write too much about skiing here.

But today was a bit of a "red letter" day. As I mention in today's Powderwatch post, I had the happenstance to be very early to the hill, stuck at the hill until late, and skiing on my own. So I decided to go for as much vertical as I could today.

The easy way to do this would have been to find something groomed and rip up and down it. But 6-25 cm of snow fell last night, so there really was no corduroy around, just acres of powder. So I skied it like I normally would, only more of it.

And I skied 13,640 vertical meters in 25 runs today. That's 44,750 vertical feet.

My best day ever was April 1, 2001, when I managed 15,430 m (50,623 vertical feet) in 29 runs on a day with a lot of groomed runs, sunshine and 10 cm of powder.

My second best was April 12, 1997, when I estimate that I got 14,263 m (46,795'). My altimeter was broken that day, so I kept track of my runs and calculated the vertical. It was a groomer day with sun and no new snow.

Today was my third best day ever, and even more impressive an accomplishment as the weather wasn't good, there were no groomers, and there was tons of new snow.

I wonder if I will ever get a chance to break 50,000' again.