The 1/2 rule

Log15

New member
As a lifty and someone who has spent most of their life on the ski hill, I've spent my fair share of time around skiers who overestimate everything. It might just be because im working at a resort and constantly have to listen to their exaggerated stories of "30 foot cliffs" and "20 feet of air," but recently it seems like its been getting out of hand. Usually it is just kids who do this, which is understandable, but I'm seeing more and more full-grown adults who are completely wrong with their measurements. Today, a man who was about 40 years old came up to me and said there was 30 inches of powder (when in reality we had about 10). It can be hard to tell who is telling the truth and who isn't, so in my head I created a couple rules to sort it out:

1. If they give any sort of measurement without you asking, they're exaggerating. Every good skier I know would just say "I went kinda huge," or "It was pretty fat," instead of "DuDe I juSt WenT oFF a 30.243 FoOt CliFf," like the jerrys do at my home resort.

2. If they do give you a measurement, divide it in half to get a more realistic answer. For whatever reason I find that people tend to think things are double the size that they actually are, especially when it comes to air time. I can't tell you how many times I've had friends or visitors that come up to me while I'm bumping chairs and say they just caught 3 seconds of air off a cliff. I always want to ask them how their legs aren't broken because I know they didn't just drop a 100 footer.

3. Don't argue with them. There is no way of convincing them that the cliff isn't actually as big as they think, and they will go through anything just to convince you that they are right. I actually had a guy bring a range finder up to the mountain once only to prove himself wrong, and he still didn't believe that he was wrong.

Has anyone else noticed how bad it's been lately? ESPECIALLY on social media.

I'm not usually someone to jerry shame or to be an asshole about this kind of thing, but I think its funny asf when people turn sending jumps and cliffs into a numbers game. It just creates a bunch of annoying people that are trying to one up each other by making up fake stories. Just have fun people, its how you actually get good at skiing.
 
yeah everyone exaggerates stuff because it does feel big but then you look the vid and ur like damn that shi was not as big as i though it was

but it really isnt that deep
 
maybe he was thinking 30cm of snow, that's not much more than 10 inches

you hear this in pipe a lot - duuude i was like 10 feet out! nah bro, you're 6 feet tall. your head was at 10 feet but your skis only went 4 feet above the deck
 
14594505:butterflywatcher said:
yeah everyone exaggerates stuff because it does feel big but then you look the vid and ur like damn that shi was not as big as i though it was

but it really isnt that deep

seriously, sick skiers don't exaggerate because they know the pain of seeing a clip look way smaller on film
 
I used to have terrible judgment of heights of say cliffs but if you think about it as stories of buildings, each story is like 10ft so 3 stories high is 30ft and you realize you have never been that high on skis in your life XD
 
topic:Log15 said:
As a lifty and someone who has spent most of their life on the ski hill, I've spent my fair share of time around skiers who overestimate everything. It might just be because im working at a resort and constantly have to listen to their exaggerated stories of "30 foot cliffs" and "20 feet of air," but recently it seems like its been getting out of hand. Usually it is just kids who do this, which is understandable, but I'm seeing more and more full-grown adults who are completely wrong with their measurements. Today, a man who was about 40 years old came up to me and said there was 30 inches of powder (when in reality we had about 10). It can be hard to tell who is telling the truth and who isn't, so in my head I created a couple rules to sort it out:

1. If they give any sort of measurement without you asking, they're exaggerating. Every good skier I know would just say "I went kinda huge," or "It was pretty fat," instead of "DuDe I juSt WenT oFF a 30.243 FoOt CliFf," like the jerrys do at my home resort.

2. If they do give you a measurement, divide it in half to get a more realistic answer. For whatever reason I find that people tend to think things are double the size that they actually are, especially when it comes to air time. I can't tell you how many times I've had friends or visitors that come up to me while I'm bumping chairs and say they just caught 3 seconds of air off a cliff. I always want to ask them how their legs aren't broken because I know they didn't just drop a 100 footer.

3. Don't argue with them. There is no way of convincing them that the cliff isn't actually as big as they think, and they will go through anything just to convince you that they are right. I actually had a guy bring a range finder up to the mountain once only to prove himself wrong, and he still didn't believe that he was wrong.

Has anyone else noticed how bad it's been lately? ESPECIALLY on social media.

I'm not usually someone to jerry shame or to be an asshole about this kind of thing, but I think it’s funny asf when people turn sending jumps and cliffs into a numbers game. It just creates a bunch of annoying people that are trying to one up each other by making up fake stories. Just have fun people, it’show you actually get good at skiing.

I’m a solid 3.209 inches throbbing
 
Dude I would have such a hard time dealing with this as a lifty. I go cliff jumping and it's even worse there. But like most people I graduated high school so I know how to calculate this and it's kinda fun to shut people down with it.

Height = (Gravity x Time squared)/2

so if the drop's airtime was 3 secs (lol)

Time^2 = 3 x 3 = 9

Gravity = 9.81

Height = 44m or 144ft

Can't argue with physics.
 
14594671:eheath said:
I used to have terrible judgment of heights of say cliffs but if you think about it as stories of buildings, each story is like 10ft so 3 stories high is 30ft and you realize you have never been that high on skis in your life XD

sometimes i forget how insanely garbage y'all are at skiing. you've never traveled 5 ski lengths in the air? that's 30 feet!
 
14594729:CantCork said:
Dude I would have such a hard time dealing with this as a lifty. I go cliff jumping and it's even worse there. But like most people I graduated high school so I know how to calculate this and it's kinda fun to shut people down with it.

Height = (Gravity x Time squared)/2

so if the drop's airtime was 3 secs (lol)

Time^2 = 3 x 3 = 9

Gravity = 9.81

Height = 44m or 144ft

Can't argue with physics.

My XXL Harlauts slow me down, your not factoring air drag
 
14594729:CantCork said:
Dude I would have such a hard time dealing with this as a lifty. I go cliff jumping and it's even worse there.

Cliff jumping made me totally give up on even trying to guess the size in feet. I remember a fair amount of the spots I liked to go to were actually measured (on video too normally) and that's when I realized me and everyone I knew were just comically bad at guessing cliff heights. Stuff that felt like 100+ ft was instead measured at 68ft. When I finally jumped that cliff I realized the "60 footer" I jumped before definitely wasn't lol
 
I have one friend who's probably double if not triple in his estimations and another one that I think is pretty realistic, maybe even a little pessimistic about it. Like for the same cliff one will say 30-40 ft and the other will say like 10-15 ft its insane lol
 
When I’m selling or mounting skis I wanna do this. If a dude says he’s an expert unprompted, 100 flex boot and size him to the nose or he won’t be able to turn.

if he says type 3 for din, he’s a type 2. Not my knees tho!

on the other hand if a chick comes in and she says she’s an intermediate she can probably throw corks.
 
This is real. I hit the 400fter at pine knob today.

Yes you read that right. I gapped from the top to the parking lot plus some underground exploration.
 
14594729:CantCork said:
Dude I would have such a hard time dealing with this as a lifty. I go cliff jumping and it's even worse there. But like most people I graduated high school so I know how to calculate this and it's kinda fun to shut people down with it.

Height = (Gravity x Time squared)/2

so if the drop's airtime was 3 secs (lol)

Time^2 = 3 x 3 = 9

Gravity = 9.81

Height = 44m or 144ft

Can't argue with physics.

Bro didn’t even factor in air density, humidity or temperature smh
 
14594729:CantCork said:
Dude I would have such a hard time dealing with this as a lifty. I go cliff jumping and it's even worse there. But like most people I graduated high school so I know how to calculate this and it's kinda fun to shut people down with it.

Height = (Gravity x Time squared)/2

so if the drop's airtime was 3 secs (lol)

Time^2 = 3 x 3 = 9

Gravity = 9.81

Height = 44m or 144ft

Can't argue with physics.

You're assuming that they're dropping immediately, straight down, in a vacuum...
 
14594667:AndrewGravesSV said:
seriously, sick skiers don't exaggerate because they know the pain of seeing a clip look way smaller on film

This is so real. My first cliff I hit I thought was 20 feet and I was humbled to see that it was probably 5 feet when I watched the clip. I never even estimate how big they are anymore because I know my judgement will be off. My measurement is small, decent sized, pretty big, fat, then fuckin huge. Fuck numbers
 
14595003:HypeBeast said:
You're assuming that they're dropping immediately, straight down, in a vacuum...

An object falling straight down versus having some horizontal travel doesn't have an effect on the time it takes to reach the ground (gravity doesn't care about horizontal movement)

And yes, I didn't calculate air resistance but that is more than negligible on an object as dense as a human body
 
Lol. Back in February was showing some wfc kids around my local and took them to this one spot with a lil rock. Said "it's like 6 ft." After we all sent it they looked up and said it was 15. Idk.
 
Lol. Back in February was showing some wfc kids around my local and took them to this one spot with a lil rock. Said "it's like 6 ft." After we all sent it they looked up and said it was 15. Idk.
 
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