Last week, we covered the story of Ogden, Utah’s Tom Hart, a dedicated skier at Snowbasin Resort who was working to set the world record for most vertical feet skied in a season. He did that (unofficially), skiing over seven-million vertical feet by Snowbasin’s closing day on April 28. By all accounts, it was an amazing effort that took hours of meticulous paperwork and certifications with the people at Guinness that included “news accounts, maps, data from apps that track vertical feet, and witness statements.” (It isn’t clear if Guinness had verified the record yet.)
But when our story broke, our dedicated comments section lit up like a light pole on a town-mountain slope. Someone else had skied more vertical at Snowbird, just up the freeway in Little Cottonwood Canyon, yelled our readers. According to the Snowbird vertical app, one in which Snowbird had used to hold vertical-foot contests before, Steffi Eyerkaufer had already skied nearly eight-and-a-half million feet this year. In fact, she’d skied over seven million during the Snowbird Lord of the Wings contest during the 2021-2022 season.
We reached out to Snowbird, which had also contacted Guinness about Steffi’s record. “The tracking via our mobile app unfortunately does not match the specific GPS file type requirements listed by the Guinness Book of Records,” the Snowbird PR team told us. Snowbird also added that the requirements from Guinness are stringent. “(Skiers and riders) would probably need to plan ahead to meet them.” Much like Hart did, who reportedly applied on November 2 of 2023.
Which it sounds like Steffi wasn’t in to doing. To summarize, in order to meet the vertical feet world record, the slopes with which the record is being attempted must be officially measured from top to bottom (only top-to-bottom runs count). Professional GPS equipment must be used and the files must be logged using a “kml file” type. Any other file type would delay or nullify the result. The runs, and trips back up, must be logged and verified by two separate witnesses. And the record must be set on runs open to the public. Again, these are just a few of the requirements that were provided to Snowbird by Guinness.
So what of Steffi Eyerkaufer? Well, aside from being a solid skier, she turned down the opportunity to be interviewed. And what of Tom Hart’s record? Well, it sounds as though once it’s verified, he’ll hold the mark. But there’s certainly a healthy amount of debate in the skiing world about who’s bagged more vertical feet this year.
