Count your vert this season? Not to burst your bubble, put it’s probably peanuts compared to that of Joe Brougher. Winning this year’s Ikon Pass leaderboard for vertical feet schralped, on March 30, the 57-year-old tracked 5 million vertical skied at the resort in a single season. He’s also the leader among all Ikon resorts this season. At tally time, Brougher skied 118 days, covering 5,003,967 feet and 2,806 lifts. Dodging lines, he’d notch 9,000 vert per hour using four lifts—the fast-moving Sundown, Storm Peak, Pony and Thunderhead. “It’s a puzzle every day to do so,” he says. Toward the end, before he headed back to Indiana for the summer on April 1, he had to rack up 39 days skiing an average of 53,000 feet per day to get to 5 million. “Mathematically, it was possible, but 39 straight days was challenging.” With one day’s wind stoppage restricting him to 4,000, he still reached 5 million in 38 days—hitting the mark on Vagabond.
