What’s a respectable amount of vertical for a day?

Harvey wrote

Can someone please explain the appeal of racking up a lot of vert.

Speed is fun I get that.

It really is that simple.

Harvey wrote

^^Right.  I think I did 7-8k of pow vert at snow ridge one day. I didn't measure it but I figure 500 per run maybe 15-20 runs. It was a whole day of fun including the hiking.  I'd take that over 30k of vert an steep icy any day.

Can someone please explain the appeal of racking up a lot of vert. It's a sincere question.  

Speed is fun I get that. I also like pulling up half way down, looking around, chatting for a minute and taking it in.

That is one reason I love Plattekill. I never feel rushed.

There is clearly an appeal as so many focus on it. I just don't understand.

East coast is a lot of days of skiing on hard surfaces with the woods closed and no moguls/icy moguls. Counting vert is just a way to spice it up when conditions are east coast normal. For me, it is mostly keeping track, rarely the driver. The speed is also a factor.

Think of a midweek day at Hunter (where I have 200+ days) when it hasn't snowed for 2 weeks and the place is a giant rink (again). I can spend the day doing Hellgate to Broadway to Kennedy non-stop and have a blast. When the legs get wobbly, I stop at the usual places.

Another in the ‘in all my 50 years I have never once counted vert’ crowd here.  Powder, trees, hiking, exploring....none of those lend themselves particularly well to racking up big vert.  Quality over quantity!

x10003q wrote

East coast is a lot of days of skiing on hard surfaces with the woods closed and no moguls/icy moguls. Counting vert is just a way to spice it up when conditions are east coast normal. For me, it is mostly keeping track, rarely the driver. The speed is also a factor.

Think of a midweek day at Hunter (where I have 200+ days) when it hasn't snowed for 2 weeks and the place is a giant rink (again). I can spend the day doing Hellgate to Broadway to Kennedy non-stop and have a blast. When the legs get wobbly, I stop at the usual places.

Dude, you totally get me

20K is a good number, provided all blue or black.  3 laps of the Slides is good too.

Zero. I always want to finish where I started.

I call it getting caught in the hamster wheel.   Strava is the app I use.  You can keep track of your activities summer and winter.  I don't really care about all that stuff its more important to me that I get out and have fun.  That said when the snow is flat and fast it is does keep my interest to push myself to go a few extra runs.  Mine was done at Sun Valley.  No lines, High speed quad, 3100 vert.  No snow in weeks decided to see what could be done.  I would prefer a foot of snow but not in the cards so I did 75k of vert. in 7 hours. Pretty sure even if people had the opportunity most could not beat it. That will be my record probably forever.  

Honestly, I usually don’t count runs myself and most places I wouldn’t stick to one lift even if I did. I don’t have Strava or anything similar on my phone and probably won’t get it because I use it for pics. When it’s just a typical EC day with hard snow and not much terrain variety I can still have fun just skiing fast for couple hours.
For instance, I get Lincoln’s Bday off every year. In the past, if it fell midweek, I would just hit mount Peter and spend the morning cranking out as many runs as I could on whatever they have open- thus my question.

Brownski wrote

Let’s say I’m skiing by myself on a weekday at a 450 foot hill, no lift lines, nothing to distract me until three in the afternoon. What’s my hot-laps goal for a day

The one time I counted runs I think I did 41, which is a little more then 18k. I’ve never tracked it at a full sized mountain but 18k on a 450 foot hill seemed ok. I was thinking of setting a goal for myself for tomorrow but now it sounds like I might have good snow (we’ll see)  and my kids might have a snow day so the point might be moot.

As someone in the Mid West i made 41 runs at Caberfae Peaks and only got 14,856' of of vertical, but for Mid West standards that is a good day.

I'm more of a smiles per turn or per vertical foot kind of guy. So any amount of vertical per day would be acceptable. Can't say I ever had a bad ski day.