North Ogden man sets sights on skiing world record; he’s more than halfway to goal
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- Thomas Hart of North Ogden is attempting to set the Guinness world record for greatest vertical distance skiing downhill in one year by a male.
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- Thomas Hart of North Ogden tackles the slopes at Snowbasin as part of his attempt at breaking a world record.
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- In this undated photo, Thomas Hart of North Ogden kisses the ground at Snowbasin after surpassing another 1 million vertical feet skied in the season during his world-record attempt.
Thomas Hart is a year into retirement.
He’s also, potentially, only about a month away from setting a world record.
Hart, a 63-year-old Minnesota transplant who now calls North Ogden home, has spent much of the winter on the slopes — mostly at Snowbasin Resort — where he is more than halfway to setting a Guinness world record for most vertical feet skied in a single year.
He told the Standard-Examiner that skiing has always been an interest of his and helped draw him toward Utah.
“I actually bought a timeshare unit at Snowbird when I was just getting out of college,” he said. “I had always told my friends, ‘Someday, I’m going to move to Utah.’ And then finally, when I was age 35, I did. And ever since I moved here, I’ve always skiied about 50 days per year until I retired. Now I ski every day.”
Hart has even gained a nickname in his time on the slopes at Snowbasin.
“Most people know me here at Snowbasin as ‘Racer Tom,'” he said. “There’s quite a few people named Tom — especially those around my age — and there’s actually another gentleman that I know that’s a friend of mine, his name is Tom Hart, and he’s about the same age, and so people here have called me Racer Tom.”
He said part of that is due to a habit of wearing racing skis for most of his downhill runs.
“I’ve been known for getting a huge amount of vertical per day,” he said. “So when I looked into the record, I told my friends what it was and immediately each one said, ‘You can do that.’ So I decided I would do it.”
Currently, the male world record for “greatest vertical distance skiing downhill in one year,” according to the Guinness World Records site, is officially 1,836,649 meters (6,025,751 vertical feet and 3.72 inches) accomplished by Pierre Marc Jette of Canada between Nov. 22, 2014, and May 10, 2015.
Hart said he applied with Guinness for just over the current record, but he has two goals at the moment.
“One goal is to set a new world record before Snowbasin closes,” he said. “Then I will continue to ski at other resorts, and then I will add to the record for the season and the goal is over 7 million vertical feet.”
As of Tuesday evening, Hart had reportedly skied 4,139,492 vertical feet, which he’s calculated to be the equivalent of skiing 4,009.3 miles.
“If I take a run and it’s 2,000 vertical feet, it’s usually about 2 miles,” Hart said. “The vertical feet isn’t straight down — it’s at an angle — and certain resorts are steeper than others. Snowbasin is about almost exactly 1,000 vertical feet per mile.”
For context, a flight between New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and Munich’s Franz Josef Strauss Airport in Germany would roughly cover 4,038 miles. The longest interstate in the U.S. — Interstate 90 between Boston and Seattle — covers only 3,021 miles by contrast.
Hart said he began in November at Solitude before moving on to Snowbasin and, at one point, skied 93 days in a row.
He added that it is very much a sunup to sundown record attempt.
“I arrive at the lift, usually, at 7:30 a.m. to be the first in line,” he said. “There’s a lot of people who get there early and we’re all friends, so we’re able to get on the first gondola or chairlift right away in the morning and I’m right at the front. Then I ski until they tell me to go home at the end of the day when they close at 4 o’clock.”
He said he usually does around 40 runs per day and has done as many as 50 in a day.
Among those in line early with him has been friend Jay Lell.
“We collectively refer to ourselves as the, ‘First-in-Liners at Snowbasin’ because we get to the mountain before anyone else,” he told the Standard-Examiner. “We boot up at our vehicles and are in line talking and enjoying each other’s company for usually a full hour before the resort even opens. That’s when I got to know Tom over the last few years.”
He said the two of them are around the same age and have a lot of shared interests and have been close friends for the last year and a half.
A native of Las Vegas, Lell moved to Utah last year and has been accompanying Hart for much of his record attempt.
“We’re all very, very confident he’s going to be able to do it,” Lell said.
Hart said there are several things he needs to do in order for the record to be certified as official.
“I have three witnesses and I’m with at least one of them every single day, and I provide all the information to them every day,” he said. “I use two apps to track my vertical, and one of the apps has every single thing you’d need to know about every single run. It has a map that shows exactly where I went, the starting elevation, the ending elevation and my speed. Every couple of days, I update my records so I have full, detailed records of every lift I took.”
He said he is well ahead of where he was expecting to be at the beginning of March and anticipates he’ll be able to set the record around the projected mid-April closing of Snowbasin. If unable to achieve it by Snowbasin’s close, Hart plans to utilize other resorts that don’t close until later in the season.
When asked why he was attempting the record to begin with, Hart said it was a perfect opportunity for him.
“I just love to ski,” he said. “I tried different competitions when I was younger, and not that I didn’t like it, I just didn’t enjoy the standing around. I just want to ski. I love to ski and when I saw this opportunity, it was just the perfect one for me. … That’s all I need to do to win — just keep skiing.”
But he said it also goes beyond the record itself.
“It’s just so much fun,” he said. “People come up to the mountain to have fun. There’s a happy vibe on the mountain and it’s great to be a part of it.”