Or a ski tourer's love affair
Aaron Rice has a suntanned face. Around his eyes – where his ski goggles sit – he’s pale. His smile is reserved, a little exhausted. Recently, the American spent a lot of time ski touring – a heck of a lot. To be exact: Aaron Rice climbed over 2.5 million vertical feet on skis. And broke the world ski mountaineering record.
In just one year, Aaron climbed 2.5 million feet on skis. That’s the same as 762,000 meters or climbing Mount Everest from base camp to summit 216 times. 2,000 vertical meters a day on average. This meant that Aaron was able to break the six-year-old world record held by Canadian Greg Hill.
2.5 Million is the story of a ski tourer from Utah whose love of ski touring and the backcountry led him to go beyond his own limits.
Pushing boundaries
What has driven you to go out every day and to experience fear and pain?
The best answer that I`ve found for why I undertook this challenge is that I love skiing and I really love good skiing. I just wanted to ski as much as I possibly could in a year and doing so in the backcountry would make my turns as good as possible. That just happend to also be a record. That being said I learned so much along the way and have found so many other reasons that probably would have been a better reason to go for such a goal.
What has been the most memorable moment and why?
I think the most memorable days were actually a couple weeks. The last few weeks of the whole year in Utha it snowed over 100 inches and the skiing was so good as it gets. Every day was 6-9,000´ of bottomless powder with great friends.
What role did your friends play in breaking the record?
Without my amazing friends, with whom I spent a lot of time touring, I would never have been able to break the record. The hardest month was in Colorado in June, when no one else was ski touring anymore. I spent a lot of time alone on tours in miserable snow conditions. A turning point came in Argentina in July, where I met like-minded people again.
What experiences and conclusions have you drawn from this year?
The realisation that I need to put more energy into my friends and family around me. I moved back to Vermont and try to spend a lot of time with my family and nurture friendships. Nevertheless, I still find the time to get on my skis almost every day and enjoy this fantastic winter.