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Snowbird • Don Derby's passion for skiing can't be summed up in numbers, even though he has meticulously logged all the numbers on a color-coded spreadsheet.
And impressive numbers they are: 133 days skied last winter, an average of almost seven hours a day, 2,937 runs in all, his bargain-basement Rossignols and boots with a taped-up inside liner carrying him down more than 6.3 million vertical feet of ski slopes. Oh yeah, he is 67 years old, too.
Still, those numbers don't measure his total dedication to the sport.
They don't reflect that Derby usually arrives at Snowbird Ski and Summer Resort at 6:30 a.m. so he can be assured of a spot on the first tram. Or that he lives a Spartan existence in a Midvale basement on the $14,000 he receives annually from Social Security. Or that he dropped 65 pounds in 2009 so he could make the big push last winter. Or that he started exercising six days a week at a gym this summer and hiked 38 days this fall in hopes of skiing 160 days this winter, with more time spent on Snowbird's tougher, steeper slopes.
"I'm a skier. That's who I am," Derby said Wednesday, his 11th day of a young season, more than 300,000 vertical feet of skiing already under his belt — and in his hand-written logbook, some of its data already transferred to his 2010-11 season spreadsheet.
"Except for skiing, I'm not an athlete. I don't really like team sports. I'm not a fan," he said. "The only thing I really care about is skiing."
It doesn't matter that he isn't the fastest skier around or doesn't have the greatest form.
"I'm cautious now that I'm older," Derby said. "I don't go out of bounds. I don't do cliffs. Just regular slopes, safe things that are groomed. I like [the] Regulator Johnson [run]. It's my favorite."
But whatever slope Derby goes down, he gives it his all. Most of his runs are nonstop.
"I'm a lot faster than a whole group of people and slower than others," he said. "I really make an effort to carve my turns and see how good of a line I can do, how I can link the turns. I don't do it to look good. I just do it for myself."
Therein lies one of skiing's great beauties — the ability to commune with nature one on one, even in a crowd.
His conviction to skiing is readily apparent to fellow enthusiast Dave Powers, who often crossed paths with Derby while skiing 138 days last winter — but covering just 3.5 million vertical feet because of "tattered knees."
"Don's got the mojo," Powers said. "It's a very Zen thing, once you do it enough. You forget completely about peripheral stuff. It's a dance."
A dance Derby clearly enjoys, said Manop "Chong" Suwan, a season-pass holder originally from Thailand who skis now and then with Derby and often sees him in lift lines.
"Don's a funny guy, a character," Suwan said, fully aware that "he's been the first one on the tram seven of 11 days this year. He hasn't missed a tram yet."
Derby said he was a "ski-aholic" from the first day he tried the sport as a 19-year-old college student. It was hardly an enchanting day.
"Three inches of snow on top of bulletproof [rock-hard snowpack]" at ice-prone Killington resort in Vermont, he recalled, leaving him with "huge welts on both thighs. I loved it, even though it was painful."
Derby regularly skied back East while working as a machine designer, much of his work focusing on fuel modules for Chrysler's PT Cruiser. But when he was laid off in 1983, he took his severance pay and headed west, where he skied 17 areas in 25 days.
The next two winters, Derby and his girlfriend skied all season at Snowbird, taking advantage of a wet cycle that produced so much snow that, when it melted, downtown Salt Lake City's streets flooded.
After that, they went back East to raise a family of two now-grown daughters before Derby had two life-changing experiences.
First, he said, "My wife had the good sense to divorce me six years ago."
Then he blew out both anterior cruciate ligaments in a crash in the woods at Killington. At that point, Derby was skiing 50 to 60 days a year, traversing what he estimated to be about 1 million vertical feet.
While recovering, he decided to return to Snowbird.
"But I didn't want to do it if I couldn't do it physically. I wanted to make sure my legs were as good as before the accident," Derby said. "How do you know? Vertical measure is an absolute measure. You can't fudge it. You do it or you don't."
So he did it, keeping track of what he did daily on paper so he could know, not guess, how well he was doing. He made the move to Utah and skied 2.1 million vertical feet in 93 days in the winter of 2008-09.
Then and now, weather made no difference.
"It doesn't matter to me what the conditions are. I ski no matter what. If you're prepared, it's nothing," Derby said.
Still, the season left him discontented.
"I was unhappy with that. I weighed 220 pounds. I was fat."
A strict diet removed 65 pounds from his frame. The difference transformed him.
"I got in 40 more days and covered three times as much vertical just by losing weight," Derby said.
Now he wants more. He wants to ski harder terrain.
"The legs weren't as strong as I'd like them to be, so I did something about it," Derby said. "I exercised a lot last summer. I literally went to the gym six days a week, did cardio every other day and hiked."
And guess what?
"Don's the first one in the tram in the summer, too," said Snowbird tram operator Alex Nakada.
"He's always pumped up and in a good mood. I guess Snowbird makes him happy."
Derby is confident his offseason workout regimen will help him accomplish his goal of being able to handle Great Scott, Silver Fox or whatever run he chooses, whenever he chooses.
But if he doesn't, he's not going to sweat it.
"Some things in life you have to accept," he said. "But I know that I couldn't do anything more to make it happen. And if it doesn't happen, it could be just because I'm too old. But I won't stop skiing."
Don Derby
Age • 67
Profession • Retired machine designer
Place of origin • Connecticut
Family status • Divorced, father of two grown daughters
Goal this winter • 160 days of skiing harder slopes —
Don Derby's ski year
Some milestones from Don Derby's 2009-10 ski season:
Days skied • 133
Total vertical feet skied • 6,343,661
Average feet per day • 47,697
Average number of runs per day • 22.1
Percentage of times caught first tram • 95 percent
Average length of ski day • 6.6 hours
Most prolific day • April 16 (66,448 feet skied)
Laziest day • June 20 (9,128 feet skied)
Most prolific week • Jan. 11-15 (299,796 feet skied)
Number of days skiing more than 60,000 feet • 23
Number of days skiing more than 50,000 feet • 36
Number of days skiing less than 30,000 feet • 10