1 week ago 18

Ground control to ‘Racer Tom’: Utah skier pushes the limits of endurance

Thomas Hart, his two friends and I are riding the Needles Gondola at the base of Snowbasin Resort on a bluebird day in northern Utah. We chat during the 12-minute ride to the top. When Hart tells me his nickname is “Racer Tom,” the David Bowie song “Space Oddity” immediately pops into my head. We laugh as I mention it to the trio.

Ground Control to Major Tom, Ground Control to Major Tom. Take your protein pills and put your helmet on. Ground Control to Major Tom (ten, nine, eight, seven, six). Commencing countdown, engines on (five, four, three, two). Check ignition and may God’s love be with you (one, lift off).

We exit the car — I want to call it a capsule now — to a layer of freshly groomed snow just below craggy Needles and Demoisy Peak, both exceeding 9,000 feet elevation. They kick their boots into the bindings on their skis, while I strap into my snowboard. I feel like I’m holding them up.

Racer Tom is on a mission.

The congenial 64-year-old North Ogden man moves out ahead of the group, effortlessly carving through the crunchy corduroy on a long series of blue runs back to the bottom, covering 2,310 vertical feet. The number is important. We climb into the capsule and do it again and again and again. At the start of one lap, a snowboarder calls out, “Come on, Racer Tom. Get going. You don’t have time to talk.”

And he doesn’t. Not if he’s going to break his own Guinness World Record set in 2023-24 for most vertical distance skied in a year, an astounding 8,513,340 feet. This year he’s going for 10 million. (Vertical feet is measured as the difference from the top elevation to the bottom elevation.)

“I’m not leaving anything on the table this season. Last year, I felt like I left something on the table,” Hart says.

So far this season, he has skied 152 days, covering more than 8.3 million vertical feet, just shy of his current record. If he makes his goal of 10 million feet, he’ll have skied 1,894 miles. It’s the equivalent of 5,630 One World Trade Centers stacked end to end or 345 Mount Everests from summit to base.

A day in the life

A native of Minnesota, his father taught him to ski on wooden skis at age 5. He was scared. Not of skiing but of his 6-foot, 3-inch, 200-pound-plus father who wasn’t a good skier falling on him as he skied between his legs. He survived, and became a lifelong skier. He bought into a time share at Snowbird as he graduated from college, telling people someday he’d live in Utah.

At age 35, with his hair going prematurely gray, he decided he didn’t want to die in Minnesota and made the move. He now sports a white mustache and overgrown soul patch. Wisps white hair peek out from under his ski helmet like wings. He has a kindly demeanor with a polite tone to his voice.

Hart, a retired commercial real estate broker, skis every day, from first chair to last chair, seven hours a day. He packs hard boiled eggs and a peanut-butter-and-honey sandwich to eat on the lift. He waxes his skis almost nightly when he gets home. He’s in bed before 9 p.m. and up at 4 a.m, 5 if he sleeps in.

He started chasing the record in Colorado before Utah resorts opened. Snowbasin is his home mountain. He’s been on its slopes since Nov. 29, save for two days in December when he had an eye problem. He hopes to ski somewhere until May 31.

On a typical day, he’ll make 40, sometimes 50 runs. He records every foot on the Ski Tracks and Ikon apps. He has ridden the Middle Bowl Express lift, a six-minute ride with 1,190 feet of vert, more than 3,350 times. He knows how to avoid chokepoints and crowds on the mountain. If a bunch of people go one direction, he goes the other. Snowy days are the best because everyone goes inside. He hasn’t waited in line longer than five minutes all season.

“Paul McCartney did not envision someone like me when he wrote the song ‘When I’m Sixty Four,’” Hart says without a hint of bragging.

A little help from my friends

Hart says skiing never gets old. He never wakes up and thinks not today. “Oh, I just love to ski. And I love all my friends. I wouldn’t miss a day for anything,” he said.

And he has lots of friends. He’s among a group of 40 or so who call themselves the “first in liners.” They line up at the gondola at 7:30 a.m., 90 minutes before the resort opens. They socialize and tell each other lies as people of a certain age do until the lifts start spinning.

Hart does ski fast but he’s cautious and aware of his surroundings. Top speed this season? 77 mph. But, he notes, he speeds down the mountain when he’s first off the lift in the morning and there are no skiers or snowboarders ahead of him. Right now he’s on a pair of all-mountain skis he received from Olympic gold medalist Bode Miller’s Peak Ski Company for anyone with more than 4 million vertical feet in a season. They’re not meant for speed but handle changing conditions from groomers to powder.

On this April day, Hart shares the chairs with Jeff Toone and Scott Harris, two skiers he randomly met on the mountain at different times in the past few years and invited to join him. They’ve become good friends ever since.

Last year in a collision with another person on the mountain, Harris broke some ribs and was knocked unconscious. Hart stayed with him until the ski patrol arrived to take him down on the toboggan, even though he was going for the record.

“He didn’t even get upset when I continually asked him how long I was knocked out,” Harris said. “He’s just a good guy.”

Toone says he was “kind of mesmerized” by Hart’s record and his can-do attitude.

“I’ve skied with him over 2 million vertical feet. I haven’t seen him fall yet,” he said as we ride the gondola once again. “He’s made me a better skier.”

Ticket to ride

In addition to a little help from his friends, Hart has all of Snowbasin behind him. The ski patrol joked that if he gets hurt they’ll pull him in the toboggan to get the record.

“There’s a happy vibe on the mountain,” he said. “It’s great to be part of it.”

People he doesn’t know recognize him and let him go ahead in the lift line. His trademark fist pump is known all over the mountain. He’d probably stay all night if he could. On most days, many skiers and snowboarders are gone by 2:30, leaving just Hart and the lift operators.

“Sometimes at the end of the day I’ll ask the employees that are closing, I say ‘So you’re telling me to go home, are you?’”

“Yes we are,” they’ll reply.

“I’ll be back,” Hart says.

And he will.

As a guitar-playing friend of his wrote: Ground control to Racer Tom, Scanning passes Racer Tom, Check your bindings now, and put your helmet on ...