 Poster: A snowHead
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In Zermatt last week I found myself idly totting up my skiing vertical each day, and I'm curious how my habits compare with other  . We aren't big piste bashers - skiing as a family means taking lots of breaks, and we much prefer to crawl down difficult pitches than blast red groomers all day - so I suspect that most of you ski far more than us.
A typical day for us was 9,000 vertical meters. How much vertical value do you get from your lift pass? What habits give rise to huge vertical? Green, blue, red, black, yellow or off-piste? Chair lifts, funiculars, cable cars or trains? And am I incredibly sad doing sums instead of just enjoying the mountains?
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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According to http://skiline.cc on my last trip to Skicircus Saalbach Hinterglemm Leogang, in 6 skiing days I used 56 Lifts to gain 18522 m
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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FenlandSkier, If I'd heard of skiline before I'd have kept a record of my lift pass number. It's one for next year - thanks!
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In my week in the Ski Welt, I used 99 lifts for a total of 32,284 metres vertical. That did include an "extra" hour an a half on day of arrival, so is counted as 7 skiing days by skiline.
The most I did in one day was just over 6500m vertical.
Jonny Jones, Skiline.cc is Austrian resorts only. There is a similar system (which has been operating longer) for the Superski Dolomiti area of the Dolomites, and there may well be other similar schemes already in operation or coming shortly, but AFAIK, there isn't one covering Zermatt at present.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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No idea about the vertical, but in 6 days in Courmayeur I did all the pistes bar two at least once, most of them I did four or five times and the main one back from the top of the bubble lift probably about 8 times! They claim 100km of marked pistes but I'd say it's probably more like 60km, I think they include the itineraries in the 100km and I steer clear of stuff like that...
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| Jonny Jones wrote: |
A typical day for us was 9,000 vertical meters. |
That is quite a lot of skiing. I've really no idea how much I would do in an average day. I have done over 10,000 in l'Alpe d'Huez in a day - skiing all the open blacks in resort, but that would not be a typical day. I think you could do more if you just focussed on a single run with high speed lifts. Doesn't someone like Dominique Perret hold the record at something like 100,000 meters?
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davidof,
Where was that record set?
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Jonny Jones, are you counting vertical meters both up and down, ie up a chairlift with a vertical of 200m and ski down it to score 400m or are you just counting that as 200m?
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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| Sideshow_Bob wrote: |
| Jonny Jones, are you counting vertical meters both up and down, ie up a chairlift with a vertical of 200m and ski down it to score 400m or are you just counting that as 200m? |
I'm counting the vertical rise of the lifts - 200m in your example. Zermatt is the kind of place where it's easy to accumulate vertical, as it has several big cable cars with a rise of 1000m or more and it's pretty queue free. The pistes aren't too crowded, either, so you can move quite quickly when you get going.
Having said that, much of our vertical on Friday was on heavily bumped-up, ungroomed yellow itineraires where it was impossible for a duffer like me to ski quickly, and we still managed more than 9000m. My 10 and 13 year olds managed more runs than me, though - my elderly legs had to sit out a couple of passes of one steep mogulled pitch for a quick chocolate break. There's nothing quite like skiing with kids to make you feel past it!
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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| Jonny Jones wrote: |
Having said that, much of our vertical on Friday was on heavily bumped-up, ungroomed yellow itineraires where it was impossible for a duffer like me to ski quickly, and we still managed more than 9000m. My 10 and 13 year olds managed more runs than me, though - my elderly legs had to sit out a couple of passes of one steep mogulled pitch for a quick chocolate break. There's nothing quite like skiing with kids to make you feel past it! |
If you really managed over 9000m of vertical, then I think your definition of not skiing "quickly" would be a to us mere mortals, little like Jenson Button saying he couldn't drive quickly in the rain in Malaysia. Still a heck of a lot faster than most of us manage.
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Seems to me you would still have to ski pretty non-stop from lift open to lift close to get that kind of vertical.
Let's see, at 1000m a run, it's 9 runs ON AVERAGE. Unlike chairs that runs continueously, one usually need to wait for the next cable car to come in unless one is extremely lucky, the uplift itself could easily take 15-30 minutes, give or take. That's easily 2-3 hours of lift operating time just spend going UP. With whatever time left to ski DOWN. Then, there's time for lunch, going to the loo etc., and the occasional faffing about with equipment and/or consulting piste map and such. I've never time myself going down, but it seems it takes a while to get down a 1000m contineous vert...
I don't know. I might have done that much in some days. But certainly not on any "typical" days.
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You know it makes sense.
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mine came out at 33792m vertical (177km guestimated piste length) over 6 days in Italy, so that's about 5600m (18300ft) per day give or take. But I certainly didn't push it.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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One the Face at Val D'Isere, I'm pretty sure it's possible to do 9000m rather quickly. Extremely quick cable car up with a 15 minute wait from 9-10:30, 5-10 minutes from 10:30-12:30, 2 minutes from 12:30 to 2, and the rest of the day is walk ons. It's about 1000m/run, and it gets up to the top in about 7 minutes. The Face is a groomer in the morning and bump run in the afternoon though (as of when I went which was last week), so maybe 5-7 minutes down in the morning and 9-15 minutes in the afternoon.
And even not doing that (which would give you MASSIVE vertical at my speed, let's say about 12000 meters ABSOLUTE MINIMUM), I'm pretty positive I racked up 10000+ meters.
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Poster: A snowHead
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As a reference, heliskiing operators guarantee you 100,000 vertical ft minimum of powder skiing in 6 days, which is about 5,000 metres a day. One trip I went on just exceeded 150,000 ft, or 7,500 metres a day. Naturally on groomed pistes, and not having to wait for the rest of a group (or a chopper) you could cover a lot more ground, but is that the point of skiing? For me it's not.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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| launcelyn wrote: |
| ...is that the point of skiing? For me it's not. |
It's certainly not the point of skiing, but it might be fun to try a one-day marathon to test your fitness. I asked the question out of curiosity, not competitiveness; we certainly never make any effort to achieve a high daily vertical, although we we usually hit the slopes when they open and stay there until they shut.
I assumed that our vertical would be at the low end of typical, not least because the Zermatt piste map suggests two daily itinaries, one for 10,000m and the other for 12,500m, and those verticals are definitely at the upper end of our comfort zone. I assumed that the itinaries were aimed at typical mileage-hungry intermediates; based on the feedback on this thread it sounds as if they're actually rather more ambitious than that.
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abc, the one at VDI is not a tram it's a gondola. And the fastest one I've ever been in. I mean like just getting right on and immediately taking off, 7 minutes up, 1000m down... does it get better if you want massive vertical on the Face?
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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| abc wrote: |
| Quote: |
A typical day for us was 9,000 vertical meters.
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That from "crawl down difficult pitches" and "taking lots of breaks"? I don't do much more than that in a WEEK! 
(I'm not a fast skier, but I'm by no means "crawling down the pitch", difficult or otherwise.  ) |
I'm one of those sad geeks who counts vertical using an altimeter watch and/or GPS. Over a season 50-60 day season I average around 8000m a day (all sadly documented on my blog!!). Obviously varies depending on lifts, snow conditions, weather, crowds, friends I'm with. I ski a lot off-piste, and with a group who are generally slower than me and a couple of buddies.
It is easy to rack up big vert on fast lifts and good pistes. One of my favorites is the Northwest territory at Mt Bachelor in Oregon. Lift is high speed quad, 780m, with a variety of fast black/red groomers to rip down, and superb tree skiing! Always deserted. On Saturday I had an hour by myself and did 5 laps in 63 minutes. So if that pace was maintained over a ski day, you could cover a fair bit. Once we did 14,800m at Bachelor, just for fun, and were in bar at 2.30pm (don't want to set bar too high for next attempt). It's entertaining to do once every few years.
Really (I know!!) 
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| Jonny Jones wrote: |
| launcelyn wrote: |
| ...is that the point of skiing? For me it's not. |
I assumed that our vertical would be at the low end of typical, not least because the Zermatt piste map suggests two daily itinaries, one for 10,000m and the other for 12,500m, and those verticals are definitely at the upper end of our comfort zone. I assumed that the itinaries were aimed at typical mileage-hungry intermediates; based on the feedback on this thread it sounds as if they're actually rather more ambitious than that. |
9K vert a day would probably place you in the top percent or three of what most people cover, based on my experience with skiing with lots of folks here.
I actually love people who start at 10am, have a long lunch and are in the bar by 2.30. Long may they buy lift tickets and ski
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| Jonny Jones wrote: |
I assumed that our vertical would be at the low end of typical, not least because the Zermatt piste map suggests two daily itinaries, one for 10,000m and the other for 12,500m, and those verticals are definitely at the upper end of our comfort zone. I assumed that the itinaries were aimed at typical mileage-hungry intermediates; based on the feedback on this thread it sounds as if they're actually rather more ambitious than that. |
Definitely.
Your vertical, while not excessive, is definitely towards the higher end of "typical" rather than the lower end.
How much vertical you can reasonably do is going to depend to a large extent on where you ski, as well as the type of skier you are. Somewhere with a lot of long individual runs, mainly linked by detachable chairs & gondolas, with few queues, you will be able to do a lot more than somewhere with mainly short runs, with a lot of drags or fixed grip chairs, or somewhere wit a lot of queues.
And you have to remember, a large majority of skiers are lowish intermediates (probably even a majority of Snowheads ), who simply will not be skiing fast enough to do that sort of distance often. I am certainly in that category.
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What is achievable in a day really (in my experience) varies massively. If we stick to fast cruising, in somewhere like the 3 Valleys or Espace Killy we can clock up 10,000m+ vertical in a day - but that's using fast lifts and sticking on longer runs with a big vertical drop. We usually manage between 7000m & 8000m vertical a day in smaller resorts, with slower lifts, lift queues (in the school hols and weekends, when we do our skiing) and shorter runs.
A couple of years ago (saddo that I am) I persuaded Mrs C that we should have a day trying to go for our vertical record when we were in Val d'Isere. I thought New Year's Day would be a good day to go for it - with the crowds in bed early on, sleeping off their hangovers. I opted for the Funival lift at La Daille - 5 minutes to ascend 990m and then a pisted, fast red to descend ("OK"). However, after 14 consecutive runs we were craving a change, so headed off to Tignes for a bit of variety.
By the end of the day we'd clocked 16,500m vertical and couldn't walk.... Maybe if we'd stayed on the 1 run for the day we could have broken the 20,000m barrier. But perhaps that's one for another year....
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Jonny Jones, bloody well done to your kids!
If Jonny is in the top few percent for vertical- where are his kids placed-for 10 and 13 year old English kids I guess?? I feel ill and now have to go and lie down/die.
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John Crawford, but wouldn't the Face with L'Olympique bubble be faster? If you miss the Funival, that's another 5 minute wait for it to come. And then you also wait in the station for it to leave for 2 minutes. Lastly, it's a longer run down.
But then again, it's quite a bit less tiring.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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edsilva, the kids found it easy - it was my wife and I who found it hard to keep up. One day my eldest blasted the notorious Triftji bump run 5 times without pausing for breath and my 10 year old, skiing a little slower, managed it 4 times. After just two attempts I collapsed in agony and boiled a kettle on my burning quads.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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John Crawford, you're as sad as me - good stuff
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You know it makes sense.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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FAQ
Granted, I'm not a fast skier. But I'm not exactly "crawling" either, just casually flowing down the hill as gravity dictates. 
), while for someone else fun in skiing is going down the slope few times, then stopping for beer and some sun and then skiing some more. People are different, and I respect this 