American skier Noah Dines began 2024 with a New Year’s resolution that was probably a little bit more ambitious than yours – he wanted to ski more than three million vertical feet uphill in a single year.
The 30-year-old is not quite there yet, but so far he’s already set two world records: the most vertical feet skied uphill in a single month (378,024ft, which he achieved in January) and on September 2, at the Chilean ski resort of El Colorado, he surpassed the previous record of 2,506,500ft for the most vertical feet skied uphill in a year. And all without the aid of chairlifts or other sneaky mechanical aid.
That’s the equivalent of skiing up Everest (from base camp to summit, if you could ski it in a vertical straight line) – 142 times. Let’s have a moment to take that in.
“Yesterday I claimed the known world record for most human-powered vertical feet skied in one year!” he posted on Instagram the day afer his achievement. “Eight months and two days in to my big year of skiing getting to the mythical 2,506,500.”
That previous record was set by Aaron Price way back in 2015 (oddly, this site says that Price skied up the equivalent of 216 Everests from base camp to summit, which would mean Everest has lost more than half its height, but there are different ways of measuring the height of the mountain).
Dines began this year’s challenge at midnight, January 1st in Stowe, Vermont, and spent the rest of the month climbing and skiing the US Northeastern slopes. That record breaking months remains his biggest month so far in terms in feet climbed (beating the old record of 328,614ft set by Greg Hill).
Since then, he’s gone global. He’s been racking up feet in France, Austria and South America. That’s where he continue skiing until late October or early November, before finishing the year back in the States, ultimately back in Stowe.
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