An expert's comment - Alain Lazard

Let me first congratulate you for yours and Dirk's performance at Deer Valley on January 4, 2010. You must be in very good shape to ski hard for 8+ hours nonstop. Last time I was in some kind of (skiing) shape, is after I skied 12 resorts in 13 days with Gérard Bouvier. That's when Gérard called you from the U.S.

I played a little bit on your spreadsheet to put in perspective what you did with the record of the defunct Aspen 24 hours.

Click on table to enlarge

As a matter of fact, the Sultan Express is a pretty good lift for this kind of attempt, better than the Silver Queen in Aspen. Even, if it has less vertical, its average grade is much steeper than Aspen, which allows to waste less time on the uphill leg of the trial. Since the Silver Queen is a somewhat older Gondola, it doesn't have the advantage of a faster speed to compensate for a flatter line.

As you can see, on the uphill leg of the trip, you were getting a vertical gain of 329 feet a minute but the guys in Aspen were getting only 238 feet. On the other hand, they were a little faster going downhill, dropping 898 feet a minute (53,880 per hour!) when you were doing 728 feet yourself (43,680'/hr). Don't feel bad about that, those guys were half your age and the Silver Queen run is ideal for such an attempt (you can let go all the way and the banked turns save you lots of energy).

Click on table to enlarge

I plugged a few other lifts under the two mentioned above that are even more appropriate for breaking a record, including the one in your home town (assuming the trails are adequate, the loading, when it is a gondola, does include too many stairs, the lift runs at full speed and you can cut the line).

P.S.: For the lift vertical rise, I took the one published by the manufacturers, usually a little less than the rounding number used by the resorts (not the case in Avoriaz). For the ride time calculation, I added 20 seconds for a chairlift, and 30 seconds for a gondola for loading and acceleration. This number could be refined. Also, I used only your vertical and time on the Sultan Express (60 laps) to do the comparison.

For example, if you had done your attempt at Vallorcine, assuming you could ski at the same speed, you would have done 112,750 feet with 51 laps in 6 hours and 40 minutes, almost two hours faster than in Deer Valley …and if you could find the energy to keep going for 8 hours 34 minutes as in Deer Valley and keep the same rhythm, you would have done just a little over 150,000 feet (68 laps), or three times your goal from two years ago!

Alain Lazard is a former ski racer, ski coach and retired ski industry consultant. He lives near Lake Tahoe, California