It started with a solid week of skiing. “From there I went on to trying for a month,” says Lane Ellis of Duluth. It took time, but eventually Ellis had skied 140 days in a row. From there, he started wondering if there was a world record for such a feat.
As it turned out, the record isn’t an official one, but through the connectivity of the internet, Ellis tracked down a Norwegian man named Tom Stensaker who had skied for 200 consecutive days. Unofficial though it may have been, the bar was set.
On November 13th of 2021, Ellis went for the first ski of the season. “The early season skiing and the late season skiing are the most challenging,” says Ellis. “Roots and rocks are sticking through.” It wasn’t until June 2nd – 202 days later – that Ellis called it a ski season. Utilizing the last remnants of snow found at Spirit Mountain, Ellis skied back and forth on a narrow stretch of snow to get in his requisite kilometer.