Maximum one-day vertical at east coast ski area

[pinion]

One of my kid's coaches mentioned a 24 hour marathon she once did at King Pine, no idea how many runs but that would get boring fast.

Just a regular day at King Pine gets boring fast (kudos for King Pine for even existing still… they put out a great product even with the low vert).

My powder day there last year looks like an EKG readout.

 

[x10003q]

Stratton has been doing a 24 hours of Stratton charity event for about 10 years. They put up lights on the lower mountain and run the AMEX HS6 all night.

https://www.stratton.com/things-to-do/events/24-hours-of-stratton

 

[jimk]

My son and I were at Arapahoe Basin in April 2009 on a day when they were running the (20th) annual Enduro race: 21 teams of two, doing as many laps as possible in the Pali section for 10 straight hours. The record at that time was 71 laps! This section is full of world class double black diamond runs. I had a yardsale on Pali Face and a friendly competitor named Susie dressed in an angelic powder blue outfit stopped to bring my lost ski down about 25 yards to me. Great athletes and nice people too. All race proceeds went to charity.

Photo of one of the competitors from that day, no easy cruising in that event:

 

[RH29]

50000 is doable at a bunch of places. I didn't start tracking vertical until last year, but a decent day gets me 20-30k depending on the mountain. Last weekend at Killington I got 30 and 33k, although I definitely could've gotten a bit more on the 30k day.

 

[Zand]

At Wachusett, The Polar Express is not running that fast these days. Also it is much longer than the Crotched Rocket for not much more vertical. For a day and night session I think lapping the Crotched Rocket wins

For just a day shift IMO a quiet day at Loon lapping North Peak would get you a ton of vertical. That lift always runs fast and its easy to bomb down Flume or Walking Boss over and over.

Yep...back in the day the ride to the Wachusett summit was in the 4 min 30 second range, now oftentimes it almost pushes 6 minutes. Not sure how long the average ride time is at Crotched but you're getting ~880 vert per ride instead of 940 but the line length is almost 1400 feet shorter so I'm sure you can definitely do quicker laps off that.

You might be right about North Peak being the best vert bang for your buck in the east. South Peak is also a very fast lift but a little longer and no straight trails like Flume. Sure your Wildcats and Four Runners get you 2K+ vert but it's hard to get a good straight run down a groomer at either of those to really maximize the vert.

 

[Ski the Moguls]

This guy did 65k verticle at Saddleback a few weeks ago.

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[John9]

This was enough for me.

 

[ss20]

You can rip 8k of vertical an hour at Jiminy Peak without trying, probably 10k if you were. No run-in/run-out either. 1,100 up in 5 minutes, down in 2 minutes tops. 60 seconds or less if you're ripping one of the front facing diamonds.

 

[nhskier1969]

You need longer lifts to maximize vertical. Sugarbush North Ridge is a fast quad(when running) can get alot of vertical off. There is a reason you can ski more vertical out west. Aspens Gondola travels almost 3300 vertical. You could lap that 20-30 times in a day.

We were at Copper a few weeks back. The top was socked in so we stayed lower mountain. We made 20 runs off of super bee(2300 vertical) by 1:30 and called it a day.

 

[KevinF]

These 60, 70k numbers are impressive, but the biggest "one day vertical" I've heard about is this: https://unofficialnetworks.com/2013/03/06/stowe-local-skis-100000-vertical-feet-day/

I think he was just lapping Hayride all day. The math is nuts. Fifty one runs in eight hours, so 480 / 51 = 9 minutes, 20 seconds a lap. Maybe a little off as you could theoretically get a "last lift ride at 3:59".

I can't find off-hand how long the Four Runner quad takes, but I want to say around seven minutes, leaving you around two minutes a run, which has to be pretty close to a full tuck the entire way.

 

[shawnanigans]

Yep...back in the day the ride to the Wachusett summit was in the 4 min 30 second range, now oftentimes it almost pushes 6 minutes. Not sure how long the average ride time is at Crotched but you're getting ~880 vert per ride instead of 940 but the line length is almost 1400 feet shorter so I'm sure you can definitely do quicker laps off that.

I have heard multiple times that the chair spacing gets all out of whack on the Polar Express at Wawa if they turn up the line speed up to what it used to be. It's been that way for several seasons now where it runs significantly slowed than it's designed speed. It's approaching 30 years old and the owners were talking about replacement in the near future in a Worcester Telegram article I read in the fall.

 

[da-bum]

These articles are always fun, but the total vertical is too high. If he did do 38 runs on the Kaatskill Flyer HS6, he would be at roughly 56k vertical feet as the HS6 is 1477 vertical feet. It looks like he tried Hunter West also and the Zephyr HSQ on West has a steep 1295 vertical feet.

The EPICMix non GPS ski tracking feature is probably more accurate since it just calculates number times passing through the lift, multiplied by its vertical drop.

I don't think he averaged 2 minutes per run, as many of them are off the Belt or more narrow trails where straightlining is unlikely or takes too long. Thats's why he didnt do 47 runs (gotta add that one extra for getting on the lift before it closes).

Anyway, I sometimes ski in the 50k vert range, and usually get close to that on the 2nd or 3rd day of skiing, where the legs are tired and the turns are much less rounder. That's with a hour lunch and usually a minute or two wait on the lift line. Even then, I never straightline down, except maybe the next to last run (or two), where I drop my partner and time it so that I can catch the lift before it closes.

 

[oldfartrider]

With long top to bottom lifts Stowe would work. Someone told me the record there on a lift ride and it was over 100k I think he said. I think at the gondola

 

[joshua segal]

While I don't recall the year, the above-mentioned Scott Howard did 175 runs on CM's Rocket in an 18-hour Midnight Madness and while they did the 9 PM groom, he took an additional 6-runs on the Zero-G (now Rover) Triple. Counting the runs on the Rocket at 875 vertical feet per run and the Zero-G at 200 vertical feet per run, 154,325 vertical in one session.

If you want to count a single calendar day, on a different occasion, he did 143 between 9AM and midnight. While it was supposed to be a "Midnight Madness", the mountain shut down at midnight. (I don't remember why.) That comes to about 125K vertical.

 

[oldfartrider]

That’s insane

 

[joshua segal]

With long top to bottom lifts Stowe would work. Someone told me the record there on a lift ride and it was over 100k I think he said. I think at the gondola

By the time Scott Howard passed, he had moved his home mountain to Stowe. The problem with getting 100K in a day at Stowe is that 100K on the Fourrunner is 49 runs. On weekdays, they are only open from 9 to 4 (7 hours). While they are open longer of weekends, the liftlines would preclude getting 49 runs. None-the-less, Scott did hit a bit over 90K there on one occasion.

I suspect that if anyone was able to do 100K in a day at Stowe, there had to be some kind of special arrangements with management either to bypass the liftline or to run the lift longer.

 

[RH29]

Berkshire East with the new HSQ will be a very good place to rack up vertical. I was able to absolutely bomb Big Chief to Lower Competition in 1 minute and 40 seconds today to make last chair. Assuming an average of 3.5 minutes up, 3.5 minutes down, that's 8.5 runs an hour, at 950 vert. 8000+ vert an hour. Even if you maintained an average of 6000 an hour, 75k vertical in a day would be doable if you did the day and night sessions.

 

[urungus]

Berkshire East with the new HSQ will be a very good place to rack up vertical. I was able to absolutely bomb Big Chief to Lower Competition in 1 minute and 40 seconds today to make last chair. Assuming an average of 3.5 minutes up, 3.5 minutes down, that's 8.5 runs an hour, at 950 vert. 8000+ vert an hour. Even if you maintained an average of 6000 an hour, 75k vertical in a day would be doable if you did the day and night sessions.

Might even be able to cut that 1:40 down a bit with the new direct route down from the top that’s coming with the new chair. Wonder if they plan on smoothing out the cliff at the top that used to be a named trail called Avalanche, more info here: https://www.franklinsites.com/skiberkshireeast/trails_avalanche.php

 

[oldfartrider]

The fourrunner opens at 8am even on weekdays and before Fail bought Stowe it was 7:30am