Vertical Feet & Ski Day Tracker
Log ski days and see your season vertical measured against Everest, Mont Blanc and a few other reference points.
Vertical per run is the drop of the lift or trail you lapped — resorts publish it, and it is usually well short of the "total vertical" figure on the trail map, which measures summit to base rather than anything most people ski top to bottom.
How that stacks up
Season log
| Date | Resort | Runs | Per run | Vertical |
|---|
Stored in this browser only — nothing is uploaded. Export the CSV if you want it to survive a cleared cache.
The ladder is not evenly spaced, and one rung is a cliff
The landmarks run from the Eiffel Tower to an airliner's cruising altitude, and the steps between them vary by more than a factor of two.
| Step | From | To | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Burj Khalifa | 1,083 ft | 2,717 ft | 2.51× |
| Ben Nevis | 2,717 ft | 4,413 ft | 1.62× |
| Mount Fuji | 4,413 ft | 12,389 ft | 2.81× |
| Mont Blanc | 12,389 ft | 15,774 ft | 1.27× |
| Denali | 15,774 ft | 20,310 ft | 1.29× |
| Mount Everest | 20,310 ft | 29,032 ft | 1.43× |
| the cruising altitude of an airliner | 29,032 ft | 35,000 ft | 1.21× |
The widest step is 2.81× and the narrowest 1.21×, a spread of 2.3. Which makes the "next target" figure a lumpy thing: clear Ben Nevis on an early day and the next rung is nearly three times as far off, so the number sits still for weeks. Clear Denali and they come quickly.
That is a property of the mountains rather than a flaw in the list — there is simply nothing famous between 4,413 and 12,389 feet — but it is worth knowing before reading progress into how fast the target changes.
And Everest in a day is an ordinary good day
29,032 feet sounds like a season. It is one strong day on a mid-sized mountain.
| A day of | Vertical | Against Everest |
|---|---|---|
| 8 runs of 1,500 ft | 12,000 ft | 41% |
| 12 runs of 2,000 ft | 24,000 ft | 83% |
| 15 runs of 2,500 ft | 37,500 ft | 129% |
| 20 runs of 3,000 ft | 60,000 ft | 207% |
A skier taking fifteen runs on a mountain with 2,500 feet of lift-served vertical passes Everest before the lifts close. Even the quietest day on that list — 8 runs, 12,000 feet — clears the Burj Khalifa four times over.
Which is the honest use of the comparison: it is very good for making a number feel real, and poor for making it feel hard. Lift-served vertical is cheap. The mountain is doing the climbing.
How to use
- Log each day with the runs or lifts taken.
- Read the running total for the season.
- Compare against the reference climbs.
- Record the day even when it was a short one.
Frequently asked questions
How is vertical actually counted?
By the descent — the drop from the top of each run to the bottom, summed across the day. It is the standard measure of a ski day because it captures effort and distance skied far better than time on the hill or number of runs.
What is a big day?
It varies enormously with the resort's vertical drop and lift speed. Tens of thousands of feet is a strong day at a large resort, and considerably less at a small one with a short drop — which is why comparing totals between mountains says as much about the mountain as the skier.
Why compare against mountains?
Because a raw number in feet is hard to feel. Knowing that a season's descending adds up to several times the height of Everest gives the figure a shape, which is the only real reason to convert it.
Does a ski watch or app measure this accurately?
Approximately. Barometric altimeters are affected by weather changes through the day, and GPS elevation is noisy. Errors of a few per cent across a day are normal, and app totals from different devices on the same runs frequently disagree.
Does uphill count?
For ski touring, that is rather the point — the ascent is the effort and the descent is the reward. Most resort tracking counts descent only, so a touring day recorded the same way understates it substantially.
Where is my log stored?
In your browser on this device, so nothing is uploaded and no account is needed. It does not sync elsewhere and clearing browsing data removes it, which is worth knowing before building a multi-season record.
🔒 This tool runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you enter is uploaded, logged, or stored.