What is it about the human condition that we feel compelled to celebrate milestones? These milestones are usually related to numbers, especially birthdays, and certain birthdays are always considered more milestone-ish than others…. like turning 40. To mark that particular milestone, I went to my favorite place on Earth, Alta, to ski 40-thousand feet for my 40th birthday.
When it comes down to it, turning 40 isn’t any different than becoming 39, 33 or even 26. After the 21st birthday, when you can legally do anything you want (besides rent a car), there isn’t anything else to look forward to. You can now smoke, defy your parents, buy porno, drive, and booze it up. Turning 40 doesn’t make me feel different, or older. The number is arbitrary. Yet I still felt compelled to do something unique to celebrate the day.
40K for 40 Years became a thing, fittingly, on the Wildcat chair at Alta. While conjuring up an epic birthday idea, I casually told my buddy, Mason, I might try to ski 40 runs in a day. Mason, who is probably better at math than I am (he does work with computers) wisely pointed out that it would be impossible – there isn’t enough time to ski that many laps from 9:15 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. when Alta opens and closes, respectively. But 40,000 feet in a day? That’s only 22 laps on the Collins lift, which rises 1,840 vertical feet from Alta’s Wildcat base to the top. It was a much more conceivable goal, especially when the constraints of Alta’s operating hours and the human-factor of possible lift lines were taken into consideration. Thus, 40K for 40 Years was born, and Mason committed to ski it all with me.
The day, my birthday, was December 18th, 2016. An arctic cold front moved into the Wasatch and temperatures were below zero at the base. Mid-mountain weather stations read -9F at 9 a.m. But the sky was clear and blue, the sun was out, and there was no wind. It was basically a perfect day to attempt a 40K vertical day. Our plan was to lap the Collins lift over and over again – 22 times for a total of 40,480 feet.
The first run was one of the fastest I’ve skied in a long time. The snow was cold and groomed to perfection. I forgot how much fun it is to bomb first tracks down an impeccable groomer, just laying turns with no variation in the snow, feeling the edges bite, and gaining speed off every parabolic sweep of the ski tails. Back at the bottom, I was jazzed for the next 21 runs and felt like we had this thing beat already. But the day would not come that easy.
While I like skiing groomers and hardpack from time to time, my heart lies with powder, mixed terrain, and steep runs. So when I saw patrol open Ballroom and Backside for the first time after a massive storm that dumped the day before, it was pure torture to not make those traverses despite how much time those runs would suck up. Ballroom was destroyed by slide debris due to ski patrol’s avalanche-control work, so I was less broken up about missing that. But Backside? I could just imagine the face shots skiers were getting without me. But Mason and I were on a mission, and so we dutifully kept our ski tips pointed down Mambo, Main Street and Strawberry.
The cold was another element that made our goal difficult to achieve. Temperatures never got above 10 degrees, and we each suffered from frozen toes and chills as cold air seeped into our bodies’ cores over time. We only allowed ourselves two very short breaks, one at noon and another at 2, to warm up and eat some food at Watson Shelter.
Water and food were both another element. We carried both in our packs so we didn’t have to stop for too long to eat lunch. I packed a large burrito to nibble on during lift rides, and a flask of whiskey to help make the cold more bearable. Although the whiskey did reveal another consequence of the cold – my lips got stuck on the metal flask.
By about the 10th run, I was pretty much over lapping groomers. But with that damn goal in mind, and a willing friend at my side to suffer with me, I had little choice but to bear down, ignore the sight of my favorite runs in view of the lift off the High Traverse, and just ski my balls off.
We accomplished our goal at 3:30 p.m. – well under our 4:30 deadline. The final two runs were easily the most difficult, as my knees and quads would barely hold a turn for more than a few milliseconds before giving out. But it was worth it. So to (again) mark a milestone, this one our final run, we deviated from the groomers and skied a powder shot on Annie’s off the High T. Marking milestones is a human construct, as is setting a goal and finishing it with time to spare. I did both for my 40th birthday, which made beer and pizza at the Goldminer’s Daughter with family and friends taste all the more savory.
The only question now is: how to make the milestone of my 50th birthday? Whatever it is, you can bet it will involve skiing.
Huge thanks to Mason Diedrich for sticking with me on the entire journey, and to Andrew Wittenberg for joining us for some birthday laps.