- Sixty-four-year-old Thomas Hart recently set a world record by skiing 11,421,065 vertical feet in a year.
- The Guinness World Records certified it, which surpassed his own previous record of 8,513,340 feet.
- Currently skiing in Chile, Hart aims to reach 12.8 million to 13 million vertical feet by Sept. 5.
SALT LAKE CITY — Thomas Hart has gone to the ends of the earth to pad his world record skiing feat.
Guinness World Records just certified that the 64-year-old Utah man known on the slopes as "Racer Tom" has skied the greatest vertical distance in a year, an astounding 11,421,065 feet from Oct. 23, 2024, to June 15, 2025.
"My breath is literally taken away each time I open the email from Guinness congratulating me that the record is official," Hart said via text message. "That feeling never gets old."
And neither does skiing for the retired commercial real estate broker.
It's Chile out there
Hart's text message originated from high in the Andes Mountains in Chile where he jetted off to a few days ago to add to his record. It's the middle of winter in the Southern Hemisphere. Temperatures are cold, and snow is falling. And it's like Christmas in July for a man who'd rather ski than do anything else.
He's skiing the La Parva, Valle Nevado and El Colorado resorts all day, every day until Sept. 5. He described snow conditions as "a bit thin" but said that a weekend storm is expected to dump 2 to 4 feet in the mountains.
Hart said he hopes to be at 12.8 million to 13 million vertical feet at the end of his last day, Sept. 5. (Vertical feet is measured as the difference from the top elevation to the bottom elevation.)
Man on a mission
Last fall, Hart set out to break the previous world record of 8,513,340 feet — his own record set in 2023-24. His goal was 10 million feet.
"I'm not leaving anything on the table this season," he told me in April as we rode the Needles Gondola at Snowbasin in northern Utah. "Last year, I felt like I left something on the table."
Hart started chasing the record in Colorado before Utah resorts opened. Snowbasin is his home mountain. He skied there until it closed April 28. Then he traveled to Mammoth Mountain in California. He skied there until it closed June 15. He tracks every foot publicly on the Ski Tracks and Ikon Pass apps.
He not only blew past 10 million vertical feet but 11 million, too, during his month at Mammoth. Ikon Pass and Mammoth Mountain celebrated Hart hitting the 10 million mark on social media. It drew more than 7,100 likes and nearly 200 comments.
On a typical day, he'll make 40, sometimes 50 runs, looking for spots without crowds and long lift lines.
How it all started
A native of Minnesota, his father taught him to ski on wooden skis at age 5. He was scared. Not of skiing, but of his 6-foot-3, 200-plus-pound father who wasn't a good skier falling on him as he skied between his legs. He survived and became a lifelong skier. He bought into a timeshare at Snowbird as he graduated from college, telling people someday he'd live in Utah.
At age 35, with his hair going prematurely gray, he decided he didn't want to die in Minnesota and made the move. He now sports a white mustache and overgrown soul patch. Wisps of white hair peek out from under his ski helmet like wings. He has a kindly demeanor with a polite tone to his voice.
At Snowbasin, Hart skis with friends, and he has a lot of them. He's among a group of 40 or so who call themselves the "first in liners." They line up at the gondola at 7:30 a.m., 90 minutes before the resort opens. They socialize and tell each other lies, as people of a certain age do, until the lifts start spinning.
And he makes new friends on the mountain wherever he goes.
Hart says skiing never gets old. He never wakes up and thinks not today. "Oh, I just love to ski. And I love all my friends," he said. "I wouldn't miss a day for anything."
