Record Broken for Most Self-Powered Vertical Skied in 24 Hours
By Megan Michelson
February 14, 2006 It was Sunday morning, just before 10 a.m. and veteran mountaineers Greg Hill and Jimmy Faust were heading out for their final 1,550-vertical-foot climb at 24 Hours of Sunlight, the first-ever uphill/downhill 24-hour ski race, held outside of Glenwood Springs, Colorado. They needed just 240 feet more to achieve their goal: 50,000 vertical feet, a new world record for most self-powered vertical skied in a day—no chairlifts allowed.
Before setting up the mountain one last time, the two men, weary from 24 hours of nonstop skinning up and skiing down, gave each other a high five. “We got worked,” Hill said to Faust. “Let’s go.”
They then trudged up their last 240 feet and skied down the mountain and into the Guinness Book of World Records for the most self-powered vertical ever skied in 24 hours.
The race, which fielded over 100 competitors in eight different categories, gave skiers and snowboarders a chance to push their physical abilities in a new and wholly original way. In temperatures reaching as low as five degrees Fahrenheit, solo and team competitors trudged forward, using telemark, randonee, and cross-country skis, as well as snowshoes and even running shoes, to propel themselves upward, lap after lap.
“It’s like a misery loves company scenario,” race director Laird Knight from Granny Gear Productions told Outside Online. “And it occurred to me that these guys—all backcountry skiers—finally had a venue, a stage where they could strut their stuff and show people what they’re capable of.”
Just a day earlier, Hill, 31, from Revelstoke, British Columbia, and Faust, 40, a Crested Butte, Colorado local, didn’t even know each other. But around midnight, hiking up under the full moon, they agreed to help pace each other to the finish line some ten hours away. They were averaging about 45-minute lap times—from the base of Sunlight Mountain Resort to the summit point a mile and a half uphill—and they knew that together, they could stay on target.
“We were just trying to encourage each other and keep going. We both realized we were on par for the 50, so we just had to get it," Hill told the Glenwood Springs Post Independent. "With (Faust's) help, we really worked it. As a team it was way easier. If we would have tried to compete, it wouldn't have worked. But we cooperated and pushed each other and kept each other going."
That teamwork ensured them a tied position for first place with 32 laps completed and a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records.
“I really liked the sportsmanship that was reflected in the way they finished,” Knight told Outside Online. “We all thought Greg would just run away with the title, but then Jimmy showed up and we had a real race on our hands.”
Hill had set out to beat the existing unofficial world record of 40,182 feet skied in a day, which he set last year skiing backcountry in Canada’s Selkirk Mountains. Faust was just up for a challenge.
“When I go into the backcountry, normally I only get a few hours in and I have to leave,” Faust told reporters. “So I’ve always felt like my thirst hasn't been quenched all season —I think we quenched it today.”
Theirs wasn’t the only record: Jonathan Baker, 38, of Salt Lake City, Utah, completed 20,215 vertical feet in 13 laps to set the first world record for most vertical feet accomplished in a day by a snowboarder.
Salt Lake City resident Polly McLean, wife of ski mountaineer Andrew McLean and the only solo female competitor completed 20 laps and 31,110 feet to win the women’s solo division. About half way up her last lap of the race, a fellow skier asked Polly how she was feeling. “Tired,” she muttered. And then she put her head down and kept on hiking.
Fifth-place men’s soloist Dustin Lemke, 30, from Jackson, Wyoming, perhaps put it best when, at just after 10 a.m. as he was slowly approaching the top of his last climb, he stopped and said, “I’ve been waiting for this moment for the last 24 hours.”
