Photo: @alpentalwa
Some of us just aren’t first-chair people. You know the type. “We’ll get there when we get there, rip a couple of laps, and cruise the lodge for a bit. Maybe sprinkle in another run or two, then back to the lodge…”
I’m taking a stab in the dark here that 49-year-old Washington skier Rob Bernhoft is nothing like that. At least he’s not like that on the final day of night skiing each season at Alpental Ski Resort — a day (and night) he’s turned into a tradition. He lays down a marathon ski session during the last day of night skiing at the resort every year. And now Bernhoff is an (unofficial) world-record holder for covering 137,252 vertical feet in one day, riding a lift 109 times, all in the span of 12 hours.
“I played hooky from work and went skiing one day thinking I would go for a couple hours and it was such a good day that I basically decided to ski all day until they kicked me out,” Bernhoft told SnowBrains about the experience that started his tradition and eventually led to his March 7, 2025 world-record ski. “At the end of the day, I had a lot of vertical and the next week I was riding up chair 1 and wondered how much vertical I could get on chair 1 because it’s a high-speed quad.”
This year, Bernhoft’s home mountain jumped on board with his plan for a marathon day and made a sign designating his priority pass on the Armstrong Express Chair. From 9 a.m. until 9 p.m., one of their favorite locals had access to his own chair and mostly open runs for the quickest laps up and down the hill. After 12 hours of skiing and with Guinness World Records on location to witness with timers, logbooks, and Bernhoft’s camera plugged into a powerbank so he could record every moment for verification, a new world record had been set.
“That’s 9.5 Mt. Rainiers from summit to sea, or 4.75 times up and down Mt. Everest in a single day. Absolute machine,” the resort announced on Instagram. “And when he’s not out here breaking records, you can find him in the Alpental rental shop – so swing by and say hi,” they added. “Huge shoutout to the lifties, ticket scanners, ski patrol, groomers, and everyone who made this possible.”
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