How a World-Record Holder Skied Every Day for Over Eight Straight Years

Want to try out to set the environment file for most consecutive days at any time skied? It may value you an ankle or two, as properly as a hip.

That’s the sacrifice made by Rainer Hertrich, a longtime snow groomer for Colorado’s Copper Mountain, who skied a whopping 2,993 straight days in a row—and is now paying the rate in appendages.

“The injuries just arrived from snowboarding too substantially,” says Hertrich, 59. “I wore out the cartilage in my ankle and acquired Charcot foot. The bones were being grinding collectively so I experienced to get it amputated.”

As detailed in his book The Longest Operate: How a Colorado ski bum skied just about every day for a lot more than 8 yrs (thelongestrunbook.com), co-authored by MJ contributor Devon O’Neil, Hertrich skied each and every working day for eight several years, two months and 10 days. He was forced to conclusion his planet-document streak on Feb. 12, 2012, at his doctor’s request, right after he was identified with cardiac arrhythmia.

Nevertheless, he took a person last operate even that working day, bringing his tally just seven days quick of 3,000—every one day considering the fact that his quirky quest started on Nov. 1, 2003, when the Marlins gained the Earth Sequence.

Hertrich began his streak following witnessing the hoopla produced by some Jackson Hole skiers who notched 6 million vertical feet in a time. Just after he passed 7 million vertical in 2004, he stored heading. And going, through bouts of the flu, injuries, and climate and logistical hurdles.

He tallied 6 months of day by day snowboarding every single year while operating at Copper Mountain. Then he’d hit shoulder-time times at Loveland and Arapahoe Basin, nearby in Colorado. From there, he’d head to Mount Hood, OR, where he labored as a snowcat driver by means of the summers.

“You have to continue to be dedicated,” he claims. “Some times have been hard, and there were a great deal of logistics to offer with. I also skied via some miserable circumstances, as perfectly as suffering and sickness. You just have to get up and deal. When I separated my shoulder, I however skied the next day I just didn’t plant my pole.”

He’d etch the closing notches on people poles each year by traveling to South America—still by some means eking out operates on consecutive times.

“Changing hemispheres was difficult,” he states. “Santiago is three hrs later than Oregon, so I’d pre-pack my equipment and get a pre-dawn run on other products ahead of my flight, then skin for a different once I arrived. When I obtained misplaced driving in the fog and scarcely created it in time. Coming dwelling to Colorado, my flight normally arrived in the morning so I’d strike Loveland on the way back.”

Just about anything counted, he explained, “as lengthy as your skis are underfoot on snow” — even nevertheless some times that intended just a lone strip of corn.

En route, he amassed virtually 100 million vertical feet, as perfectly as a peculiar file in Guinness. “To me the vert is more important—the record is gathered vertical descent in consecutive days,” he mentioned. “That’s a million vertical toes for every month, which is a ton.”

He admits that any one striving to mimic his feat during today’s COVID era could possibly have it more durable. “Resorts in South The usa didn’t open up right until early September, missing most of their year,” he suggests. “If COVID hit whilst I was accomplishing it, it would have been more than.”

Weather alter is also producing it more challenging. “It’s making it more durable in each hemispheres,” he suggests, adding he continue to watches the climate close to the globe. “To have to hike a 14er just to get to a minimal patch of snow is type of preposterous.”

The injuries began racking up proper right after his streak finished. That spring, he joined a team of buddies on a raft excursion down the Grand Canyon, walking barefoot in the sand for 3 weeks. That was much too considerably for ankles accustomed to remaining locked inside of ski boots one particular of them “swelled up to the dimensions of a soccer,” he claims.

“The physician explained I was heading to have difficulty,” he says, introducing he at last obtained it amputated in 2016. “I just wore myself out.”

The hip replacement came a several years later on in 2019, also a victim of just about 3,000 straight days of schussing down mountainsides. Then, this past summer season, when seeking to ride his BMW 1200 motorbike to South The usa, he crashed on California’s Rubicon Trail, crushing his other previously compromised ankle. If the medical procedures doesn’t operate, that one particular, much too, may possibly be a part of the prosthetic club.

However, he’s pleased he received the consecutive days in, and set the quirky document, though he did. And, for each doctor’s orders, he plans on snowboarding once more appear January. As for his prosthetic ankle, he suggests it even has its advantages. “For a person, it under no circumstances gets frost bite,” he says, incorporating he carries a spare each time he travels. “And you can buckle your boots as restricted as you want if it will get crushed, it functions as elements.”

And he’s not that worried about anybody thieving his thunder anytime shortly. “I consider I’m quite risk-free with the document,” says Hertrich, who, when not snowboarding, now has plans to get his captain’s license and operate sailboat outings in Florida. “I doubt everyone will ever crack it.”

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