Skier Sets New World Record By Riding 101 Different Lifts In One Day

There is one thing that all skiers and snowboarders can agree on – we all hate lift queues.

It’s that awful feeling when you arrive for your first lift of the day, or at the bottom of a slope after a fantastic run, to find a large crowd of people in a giant ‘v’ shape, jockeying for position, while slowly shuffling forwards. And you silently curse every time the ‘liftie’ allows a chair or gondola to go up with an empty space!

I have witnessed quite a few very heated arguments when someone has been accused of ‘pushing in’ and in the worst cases, even seen punches thrown.

On one memorable occasion, I watched a female French ski instructor pick up a young boy by the back of his ski jacket who, with two of his friends, had skied up the side of a queue for a shortish button lift several times, and ducked under a rope to get to the front of the line.

She lifted him back over the rope, kicked off his skis, threw them over a snow drift, and then instructed him: “Get your skis, and go with your friends to the back of the line like everyone else, or find another lift.” The three boys meekly went to the back of the queue to cheers and applause from the waiting skiers and snowboarders.

However, the feeling of despair caused by a long queue is matched by the form of nirvana you experience when you find a lift with no queue at all, and you can almost ski and snowboard straight onto a chair or tow.

Some skiers and snowboarders like to get up a mountain as fast as possible and will take advantage of a long ride on a cable car, or in one of the modern high-speed gondola systems now found in many resorts.

Personally, I like to keep my skis on if I can and prefer, when possible, to make my way to the top of a ski area through a combination of chairlifts and skiing in between.

In February, one skier took catching lifts to (pardon the pun) a new high by breaking the world record for riding the most ski lifts – 101 – in one day.

Oliver Kern, the founder Skiresort.info, first claimed this world record on 8 December 2007 with 52 different ski lifts in one day in the SkiWelt Wilder Kaiser-Brixental. Three months later his record was beaten by someone who notched 60 different lifts.

Oliver took back the record on 27 January 2009 when he caught 70 different ski lifts in one day. This world record stood for 16 years until another skier claimed the accolade with 81.

Oliver was determined to become the world-beater again and set about making plans to take a record-breaking number of lifts while skiing in the Swedish resorts of the Sälen region.

The passionate skier’s record attempt started at 7.30am on Tuesday 11 February 2025 with lifts in Stöten, then it was off by car to the Hundfjället ski area, a sub-area of SkiStar Sälen, where the lifts opened at 9am, followed by Hundfjället (SkiStar).

At 11am, two connecting lifts transported Oliver to the Tandådalen ski area (Skistar) and around 1pm, he also took the östra transport lift to where a car was waiting to whisk him off to Högfjället (SkiStar). A three-seater chairlift and a T-bar lift took Oliver to the Lindvallen (SkiStar) section of the ski area where another 29 lifts were added in record time.

There was no opportunity for a break during the 11-hour ski day, not even in Lindvallen at the world’s only ski-thru McDonald’s, as Oliver only had time to eat and drink while riding the lifts.

By 5.30pm, he was in the Kläppen ski area, where he skied another nine lifts. The 10-passenger Gondol Sälen gondola lift took him to the summit, where the official world record certificate confirming he had ridden 101 different ski lifts was awarded.

Between the hours of 7.30am and 6.30pm Oliver had ridden on one 10-person gondola, 10 chairlifts, and 90 T-bar and button lifts. By the end of this season, he will have skied in 1,000 different ski resorts in 35 countries on six continents, using 8,400 ski lifts and cable cars.

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Skier Sets New World Record By Riding 101 Different Lifts In One Day: A Summary

Skiers and snowboarders universally dislike lift queues, often enduring long waits and frustrating inefficiencies, sometimes even leading to heated confrontations. However, the joy of finding an empty lift is unparalleled. While some prioritize speed using high-speed gondolas, others prefer chairlifts with skiing in between. One passionate skier, Oliver Kern, took lift-riding to the extreme by breaking the world record for the most ski lifts ridden in a single day—101 lifts across multiple Swedish ski resorts. His 11-hour marathon involved strategic planning, car transfers, and non-stop movement, ultimately earning him the official world record and adding to his impressive skiing achievements across the globe.