Incredible skiing facts?

Last week (May 16), I got an email from Vail Resorts (VR) that owns Park City Mountain where I ski all winter. Since I was traveling out of town, I initially didn’t pay much attention to its content, but once back home I looked at the numbers concerning myself and saw they weren’t quite accurate. 

For example, it said I skied 121 times when in reality I skied 124. My total vertical wasn’t accurate either, it gave me 2,474,476 feet vs. 2,481,556, which represents an average of just over 20,000 feet for an average of 3 to 4 hours skied per outing. Also, and as I had remarked during the season, the vertical accounting was “variable” some days, either the “pinging” at the base of the lift wasn’t functioning or VR central computing had some failings. 

Then I saw the overall records, like on pass-holder had skied 168 times, another claimed visiting 26 (VR) resort, but most stunning was a claim of 10,800,000 vertical feet skied by a skier. If that person was the same who skied 168 times (and only if that was the case), he/she would have skied an average of 64,285 vertical feet per outing, which is an awful lot. 

Personally, I have once skied a record 112,750 feet in one day, back on January 4, 2010 with my friend Dirk Beal at Deer Valley and it required a few accommodations (fast and steep lift, earlier hours, no line, no scanning and absolutely no lines!). The next best we could do in normal conditions was 85,590 feet on January 5, 2009. 

Do I need to add that steep and fast lifts are required, absence of lines, scanning, perfectly groomed slope to even come close to such number.? Pursuing maximum quantity of vertical feet is also inherently dangerous as it pushes the participant to take some large amount of risk, particularly at the announced level. 

I would also add that skiing that huge amount of vertical on groomed run seems very sterile to me. From a realistic standpoint, I’d say that 5 million feet is possible and 7.5 million would already be a stretch, so I can’t quite believe in the 10.8 million figure. 

I guess that this high number must come from Whistler-Blackcomb, I’d also like to know whether that record holder is a guy or a girl, what is the person’s age and background, but in the absence of knowing for sure and based on the above considerations, I’m more than skeptical!