Vertical excess?

Last year my good friend Dirk Beal tempted me into celebrating his birthday by breaking a vertical record on skis. We then exceeded our goal which was 50,000 vertical feet by tallying some 85,590. We then went home, licked our wounds and almost forgot about the freak achievement. A few weeks ago, Dirk subtly reminded me that we “could do better than that” around his 51st birthday; I foolishly nodded and yesterday I almost had a coronary in keeping up with the man – at least trying to showing off that I wasn't dead yet on skis.

Our goal was to break through the 100,000 barrier and we managed to do it. Most of it (20 miles worth of vertical) was achieved on one single lift, the mighty “Sultan Express” that whisked us 1,760 feet higher on the hill, every seven or eight minutes before we'd launch into a hair-raising downhill ride. We started early in the morning and ended up eight and a half hour later having clocked an amazing 112,750 vertical feet. We had just beaten Ski Utah's Nathan Rafferty and his buddies who set the previous record at 108,066 feet at Snowbird in 2007. I won't get into the technical details to describe how Dirk and his Deer Valley Resort associates set us up for success, but can only certify that no human being (or wildlife for that matter) died, or any blood was shed, as a result of the experiment. I felt a bit stiff after dinner, but I put that on the account of old age...