‘The Final Boss’ skis into the record books again

Thomas Hart, aka Racer Tom, set out last fall to break his own world record for most vertical distance skiing downhill — 8,513,340 feet — set a year ago.

“I’m not leaving anything on the table this season,” he told me in April as we rode the Needles Gondola at Snowbasin Resort in northern Utah.

And he didn’t.

Between Nov. 30, 2024 and Nov. 30, 2025, the North Ogden, Utah, man skied 285 days on two continents — 231 days in North America and 54 in South America. He traversed the slopes of Snowbasin, Snowbird and Brighton in Utah; Arapahoe Basin, Copper Mountain and Keystone in Colorado; Mammoth in California, and El Colorado, La Parva and Valle Nevado in Chile.

On a typical day, he made 40, sometimes 50 runs. He recorded every foot on the Ski Tracks and Ikon Pass apps.

And at the end of that yearlong period Hart almost doubled his previous record, totaling a jaw-dropping 16,038,376 vertical feet. (Vertical feet is measured as the difference from the top elevation to the bottom elevation of a ski run.)

Guinness World Records recently certified the feat.

He’s the boss

“I celebrated with a fantastic dinner with my girlfriend (whom he met at Mammoth) at Ogden’s finest restaurant, Hearth on 25th Street,” the 64-year-old Hart said.

“This record feels a lot different for me than the other records because I always knew that I could beat or exceed those records, while I don’t think I can beat this record and I’m not planning to try.”

His new moniker, according to a sign he posed with at Snowbasin in recognition of hitting 16 million feet, is “The Final Boss.” Guinness noted that Hart “wanted to exceed his own full year record by a size/amount that he could never again break.”

Hart said he’s “taking it easy” this season, though he still expects to ski 6 million to 7 million vertical feet. He’s already atop his usual spot on the Ikon leader board at nearly 1.9 million feet so far.

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 timeshare 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 of 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 daily, from first chair to last chair, seven hours a day, mostly at Snowbasin, his home mountain. He packs hard boiled eggs and a peanut-butter-and-honey sandwich to eat on the lift.

The bees sneeze

As it turns out, chasing the record had an unexpected health benefit. He’s no longer dealing with allergies.

Jeff Toone, a fellow skier he randomly met at Snowbasin a couple of years ago and who has become one of his closest friends, happens to be a beekeeper. He provided Hart with a steady flow of honey.

“Eating local honey on a regular basis has a curing effect on pollen-related allergies which I had suffered from my entire life until Jeff started supplying me with honey for my daily peanut-butter-and-honey sandwiches on the mountain,” Hart said.

And once summer rolls around, Hart, his girlfriend and a Chilean partner will be in Chile helicopter skiing with an operation they’re part of for another endless winter.