January 3, 2011, Crystal Mountain Gondola Cruise

We can relive our memories of 'Hotdog'.....or not;)

They're way too far apart.

Gotta say the report of the 65k day sounds pretty big Amar…kinda like the 22” trout I caught the other day…Gondy’s very nice ride, but can get plugged up pretty fast from what I’ve noticed with the limited number of buckets at this time…and as noted the shorter load/unload areas…thanks Amar for that insight…I was wondering why it seemed so hard to load the buckets the first day, but the process seemed a little smoother on Monday – but still a rush. But, I got poked cause of Amar’s report for my relatively tame hamster big day on REX, seems like sometime in the last year or two on a perfect sunny, somewhat firm (for the deep pow crowd), groomed to perfection, nobody on the mountain kinda day, I clocked for me what some folks thought was highly suspect, couldnt find the number, but it seemed kinda big for me at the time. So when I read Amar’s claim of only 13 Gondy rides and 21 REX runs….hhhmmmm…(21 REX runs seems big by itself), even on this last Monday which was a pretty nice day of no lift lines. I only managed 36k, but that included only 2 Gondy rides, 2 Exterminator runs, 5 PB/BP runs and numerous front side of REX runs in the little bumps. Gondy is nice, Gondy will be nice on weekdays, Gondy will be better when fully bucketed out. Gondy is nice to suck a few folks into standing in line on weekends, Gondy is good for Crystal bottom line, I’m lookin forward to riding it this June after Whistler closes.

Mt. Bachelor uses their RFID to track your entire day on the mountain. Here's a look at what you get through their tracking.

track.mtbachelor.com/tytticket.asp?passm...urrentday=01/01/2011

I was totally surprised that my lap times are so consistent (within a minute of 25 minutes each run).

In my defense it was a pretty casual trip that included lots of drinking

Great pics, thanks for the nice report. . . As a totally unrelated aside : Are we entering the realm of Vertical George and tracking wrist bands ? Is there going to be a chart in the lodge for each contestant ? Instant realtime leader board? How about the cool reflex poles, vests and pins ? [/url]

Wow, what a blast from the past! I remember Club Vertical quite fondly from my first season in the Northwest (1994-95), after moving from the East Coast. I thought it was the greatest thing ever in lift-served skiing, giving away free gear just for skiing lots of vertical?? What an amazing concept!! I was sad when they gutted the program in 1995-96 and then discontinued it entirely a couple of years later. 

I still have the free Reflex Aero poles I won, and I've used them every single lift-served ski day for the last 16 years, still going strong! Used the free Smith ski goggles for many seasons (they eventually broke), and still have the nice Club-Vertical-logo Roffe vest too, along with the pins and the plaque. Best of all, most of my ski days were midweek, when prices were only $18 (Mon-Tue) and $20 (Wed-Fri). So I barely paid $250 for my 14 days of skiing (1 day was free) and then got over $200 in free gear (goggles, poles, vest for reaching 350K, 500K, and 750K vert), plus lots of coupons for free sodas and whatnot. Quite the deal for a physics grad student, struggling to live and ski on a teaching assistant's salary of $1006 per month before taxes. But no wonder Crystal had to cancel the program, with poor economics like that acting against it.

And Vertical George with his crazy fat skis! (It was 1994, my skis were still 64mm underfoot GS racing skis, and most everyone else's were that width too.) What a character, rode the lift a number of times with him. Heard that he once managed 58 rides on Rex in a day (over 92,000 vert), on one of the spring days when they stayed open until 5pm -- can anyone confirm that number?

My personal best was 50 Rex (+ 1 Midway) for 80,050 vert, which I've still never matched. Lots of days over 75K since then, but never quite 80K. One of these days, I'll go someplace with a nice high-speed quad and night-skiing, and try for well over 100K in 12-13 hours.

Here's my final Club Vertical statement from that season:

Mt. Bachelor uses their RFID to track your entire day on the mountain.

I like Mt Bachelor and its vert tracking system a lot (obviously), it's too bad I only manage to ski there once every few years. Although it used to suck when they had the lift tickets on a bungee cord around your neck, you had to insert the ticket in the reader at the lift corral, and then it would spring back and snap you in the face -- RFID is much better!

However, I have an Avocet watch that spits out the daily vert and runs, so, I keep track as a secondary stat to the adrenaline and whoohooo stats.

I love my Avocet watch dearly, it's still going strong for over 16 years since I bought it on clearance at LL Bean for $68! And it looks brand new again now, since I sent it in to Avocet a couple summers ago and got the entire case replaced for $30. It's still quite accurate, but it always counts a few percent too much vertical. And all altimeter watches used for counting ski vertical have the same issue.

The reason is that there's a dynamic pressure caused by one's speed moving through the air, which increases as velocity squared. This effect causes an extra pressure equivalent to about 30 extra feet of vert per run at 30 mph, with 55 extra feet at 40 mph and 85 extra feet at 50 mph. So this error typically adds an extra 3-6% of false vertical to the day's total, with more error if you're skiing faster or riding lifts with less vertical per run. It's something to be aware of if using the Avocet's total for bragging rights, since 50K on the watch is really only 47-48K of true vert. For accurate counting, the only way is to count the runs on each lift and then multiply by the correct vertical for each lift, if you can find the numbers (only certain enlightened ski areas list the vert for each of their lifts, other lame ski areas don't). Or have the ski area count it for you via RFID!

Amar,

Don't talk too loudly or you might ruin this guy's day

He made two million vertical feet of back country runs in a single year (just completed his goal a few days ago).

www.greghill.ca/pages/the-2-mill-day/

Looks like he tracked it all on his watch. Hopefully he had some kind of super accurate altimeter watch.