By: randosteve|Posted on: December 31, 2010|Posted in: Inspire, People | 19 comments

bctc10_gh2mil_063Congrats to our Canadian friend, extremely passionate backcountry skier, and Arc’teryx, Dynafit and Backcountry.com poster-boy, Greg Hill, in his quest to backcountry ski 2,000,000 vertical feet in one calendar year. It’s been a long road for Greg and I’m sure it took a tremendous effort on his end to reach the 2 million mark.  No doubt he’s psyched to NOT think about numbers for a while and just ski rad, Selkirk terrain.

I’ve read a few comments on the interwebs that this achievement isn’t that big of a deal or all that hard to accomplish. That people have been doing it for years, and who wouldn’t want to ski as much as possible…all year long?   To that, I say…ORLY?

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The Early Numbers

Days Skied- 261
Number of Ski Runs- 1019
Average Feet Per Day- 7520

bctc10_gh2mil_0301The thing is, is that inevitably there will be down days when you’re tired, need to be responsible, the conditions blow, or there is no real snow within hundreds of miles of where you live…and you don’t ski.  Or at least don’t hike and ski 5,480′, the vertical Greg needed to average every day, for 365 days to achieve his goal. Therefore, the next day you need to put in a bigger day, like 10,000′ to catch up…and that might just make you take another day off, or have a short day, the next day. See where I’m going with this? Add in the fact that finding good (and convenient?) places to ski for the whole calendar year, and this sounds like a doozie of a challenge and an impressive feat by the G-man.

I say big props to Greg Hill and I look forward to seeing what he’s up to in the future. I know I will see and ski with Greg down the road, and when that day happens, I will gladly break trail for my honorable backcountry brother. And who knows, I may even let him have first tracks! 🙂