If you were to throw aside the amount of fossil fuels needed needed to power the typical modern chairlift and solely focused on what you, mountain man Bob or lady Jane, would need to burn in calories to ski up that piste, do you have any idea what it would take? Let’s do the math.
Ski touring is similar to running in terms of calories burned but you must account for equipment, skis, bindings, and boots. “Add 18 percent to the amount of time and calories burned vs. running”, says Max Taam, Aspen Mountain ski patroller and easily the fastest individual up the same mountain, faster than a guy named Lance. (Look it up!)
Let’s take some of Colorado’s best known resorts and gauge exactly how much energy Bob, Jane or even Randy from Rochester, New York would need in terms of caloric intake to make it uphill on ski touring equipment at each of these “hills.”
Each ski mountain obviously has a “longest run,” usually a green circle ski trail with a slope gradient of less then 25 percent with names like, Roundabout, Heaven’s Highway, Riva Ridge, Long Shot, Four O’ Clock and any other name that you can possibly think of where you’ll be guaranteed to run into Carl in Carhartts snowplowing down in rear-entry boots open jacket flying high on sour diesel krunk blend. Although an uphill route will never follow this trail to a tee as it snakes around a mountain in infinitude. It will go up steep terrain and zig zag slightly, so we can leave this number the same.
Note: the fastest route to the peak is not the steepest, as discussed in a recent University of Colorado study published in The Journal of Applied Physiology, it’s a 13 percent slope gradient, and at each angle you can conservatively add 12 seconds to each percent increase. But since we are using man-made ski trails we’ll increase the gradient percent to a conservative 30. In review, we’ll add 6 minutes to each mile uphill..
The average person runs an eight-minute, 30-second mile on flat ground and at 14 minutes 30 seconds on a 30-percent slope gradient. If you are ski touring (adding 18 percent for equipment), you will cover a mile in approximately 17 minutes 6 seconds at 30 percent slope gradient.
Let’s put all that together and see how fast Bob and Jane get their suffer on for the uphill on these mountains. Assume Bob is 5’10”, 170 pounds (the average U.S. height and weight, plus one inch and minus ten pounds for mountain shape) and 34 years old (the average age in Colorado). Jane is 5’6” and 151 pounds (same calculation) and also 34 years old:
THE STATS
A-Basin 1.5 miles
25 minutes; 36 seconds
137 calories Bob / 157 calories Jane
Aspen Highlands
3.5 miles
59 minutes; 54 seconds
319/344 calories
Aspen Mountain 3 miles
51 minutes; 21 seconds
274/313 calories
Beaver Creek 2.75 miles
47 minutes; 4 seconds
251/276 calories
Breckenridge 3.5 miles
59 minutes; 54 seconds
319/344 calories
Buttermilk 3 miles
51 minutes; 21 seconds
274/313 calories
Copper Mountain
2.8 miles
47 minutes; 55 seconds
255/280 calories
Crested Butte 2.6 miles
44 minutes; 30 seconds
237/262 calories
*Eldora 3 miles
51 minutes; 21 seconds
274/299 calories
Loveland 2 miles
34 minutes 14 seconds
182/202 calories
*Monarch 1 mile
17 minutes; 6 seconds
91/116 calories
Powderhorn 1.8 miles
30 minutes; 49 seconds
164/189 calories
*Purgatory 1 mile
17 minutes; 6 seconds
91/111 calories
Silverton 2 miles
34 minutes; 14 seconds
182/202 calories
Ski Cooper 1.4 miles
23 minutes; 57 seconds
128/153 calories
Snowmass 5.3 miles
90 minutes; 43 seconds
483/508 calories
Steamboat 3 miles
51 minutes; 21 seconds
274/299 calories
Sunlight 2.5 miles
42 minutes; 47 seconds
228/253 calories
*Telluride 4.6 miles
78 minutes; 44 seconds
420 /445 calories
Vail 4 miles
68 minutes; 27 seconds
365/390 calories
Winter Park 4 miles
68 minutes; 27 seconds
365/390 calories
*Wolf Creek 2 miles
34 minutes 14 seconds
182/202 calories
Again these figures are purely hypothetical and I don’t doubt you may puke trying to stay “average.”
—Joseph Risi recently became race director for the COSMIC series (Colorado Ski Mountaineering Series) where he can be seen organizing skimo races throughout the west to make skiers suffer uphill and down.
