GIRDWOOD -- Gary Mashburn is 64 years old and skis on a pair of artificial knees. And nobody can keep up with him.
"My goal is to be the baddest, oldest skier on the hill," Mashburn said earlier this week after hopping off Chair 6 at the top of Alyeska Resort. "I'm close now."
Mashburn has ample evidence to back up his claim. For the fourth straight season, he has skied more vertical feet -- about 3 million so far -- than anyone else at Alyeska according to the resort, which issued a press release recently lauding Mashburn's ironman dedication to the sport.
"We are extremely excited to have these die-hard skiers here in Girdwood and at Alyeska Resort," resort general manager Di Whitney said in a press release. "These guys are an inspiration to us all to get out and get after it as well as a reminder that good skiing conditions can be found."
Last winter Mashburn topped 5 million vertical feet, besting second-place Tim Marks by about 800,000 feet.
"If I ski four hours, he skis five," joked Marks, a 58-year-old semi-retired salesman from Girdwood, who frequently joins Mashburn for nonstop top-to-bottom runs down the mountain.
The two men are among a small cadre of the resort's most hardcore skiers, a group of season pass holders that consists mainly of middle-aged ski bums who arrive at the resort daily no matter the conditions. At least a dozen have skied more than a million feet this winter despite of less than ideal conditions.
"The worst weather is usually the very best skiing," said Mashburn, who moved to Alaska from California in 1975 so he could do more skiing.
The world's biggest ski bum
Mashburn might be the world's biggest ski bum. With a mop of gray-blonde hair and twinkling bluebird eyes, he certainly looks the part. He's got a laid-back confidence that would seem cocky if it weren't coupled with an easygoing, friendly nature that has him constantly cracking wise with everyone from lift attendants to ski patrollers.
He has skied every winter since coming to Alaska. In the summer he water skis. His email address isn't his name, but a reference to skiing.
Mashburn drives to Alyeska from his home in South Anchorage almost every morning. He supports his addiction with retirement money, savings and a rental property in Girdwood. It's a lifestyle he has wanted since he first strapped on a pair of boards.
"When I learned to ski at the age of 21, the first thing I said to myself is, 'I've wasted my life up to this point,' " he said. "I've always thought it'd be great if I could retire and just ski every day, and that's what I'm doing. I love it."
Alyeska started automatically tracking the vertical feet skied by its season pass holders in the winter of 2011-12. Mashburn was the top skier that season and has been every year since. It's a title he held unofficially before the official tracking system was put into place. Last winter's 5 million vertical feet were helped in large part by the new Chair 4, which made the trip up the mountain significantly faster.
"It's the speed of the chair lift that slows you down from being able to ski more vertical," said Mashburn, who has two adult children and four grandchildren.
Many of the mountain's most dedicated skiers like to hit the mountain as soon as the first chairs open to the public. On a recent sunny morning, Mashburn was first in line to get on the tram that goes up the mountain's North Face.
"I don't feel like I want to be five minutes late, 10 minutes late," said Mashburn, who said he skied last season on a model of K2 brand skis called Obsession. "I want to be the first on the chair."
After reaching the top, he slapped on his skis and pointed them straight down the hill, speeding off at a most un-grandfatherly clip toward Chair 6, which takes skiers to the top of the resort area.
For the next 90 minutes he skied virtually uninterrupted, whooshing down the hill at a controlled yet breathtaking pace. He and Marks claim racking up vertical feet is about endurance rather than speed, but neither one of them gets passed, either.
"It's hard for people to keep up with our pace," Mashburn admitted.
A physical toll
It's not uncommon for the men to ski for five or six hours like this, speeding from the top to the bottom and back up again without ever stopping for so much as a bread bowl of chili. They pack their own snacks, going nonstop until their legs tire or conditions deteriorate.
Mashburn's dedication to skiing has not come without a cost.
"I've had two meniscus operations, my bicep muscle's been ripped off once -- no, twice -- the rotator cuff on my right shoulder's been ripped off, I had a hernia, I've broken my ankle twice…"
So why does he still do it?
"Because I love the sport," he said.
Making Mashburn's accomplishments more remarkable are his artificial knees, which were installed in the spring of 2011 by Dr. Tim Kavanaug of Orthopedic Physicians of Alaska in Anchorage. Mashburn said the titanium and plastic knees gave him a new lease on life after he'd run his old ones into the ground.
"I couldn't straighten my leg, I couldn't bend it up behind me," he said.
Mashburn appears in a commercial for OPA that shows him waterskiing on Big Lake -- his summertime passion.
"I feel like a whole new person," he says in the testimonial.
Marks jokes that the knees give Mashburn an unfair advantage.
"I have to go home and rub linament on my knees; he just uses an oil can," Marks said.
Fending off challengers
Mashburn has no plans to slow down any time soon. In fact, he's looking for someone to challenge him. His current challengers are mostly ski bums like Marks, but there are also plenty of young guns trying to hang.
"There's some fifth-graders out there," Mashburn said.
He's not kidding. Gary's son, Steve, who works as a graphic designer for Alaska Dispatch News, is a youth ski coach. Steve tracks his skiers' vertical feet, and their top goal is always to beat "Steve's dad."
"Steve's like, 'good luck with that,' " Mashburn said.
One advantage the kids have is their superhuman endurance. While Mashburn's 64-year-old quads can only hold out for four or five hours without stopping, a caffeine-mad 12-year-old is a different kind of animal.
"Those kids will come out at 10:30 and stay until 9 at night," he said. "They'll ski all day."
Whether there was a tracking system in place or not, Mashburn said he'd be on the slopes every day. He skied 28 days in January and 25 in February. Marks was on the mountain almost as much, even though Alyeska has seen near-historic low snowfall this winter.
"December was absolute crap," said Mashburn, who nonetheless managed to ski 365,000 vertical feet -- nearly 150 runs from top to bottom -- that month.
Despite the tough year, both men said ski conditions have been surprisingly decent.
"You just have to take advantage of what you get," Marks said.
With longer days now bathing the mountain in sunshine, it's a good bet the two men will hit the slopes every day until the resort closes.
"From here to the end of the season there's not much reason to miss a day," Mashburn said.
The most Mashburn has skied in one day is 70,000 vertical feet in seven hours. That's the equivalent of skiing from top to bottom almost 30 times. For a lot of folks, that's a whole season.
"You tell people how much we ski and they don't quite get it," he said. "I was at a dinner party with my wife, and one of her girlfriends asked me, 'If you ski every day, what do you do on weekends?' I said, 'I ski every day.' "
He's not above boasting. But since there's no prize for skiing more than anybody else, Mashburn has to settle for the admiration of his peers.
"All I get are bragging rights," he said. "So I brag a lot."
Mashburn believes he has earned the right to be proud.
"I think it's pretty amazing," he said. "I'll be 65 years old this year. Who else does this? Who else skis like this?"
Nobody, that's who.