well ya i think this speaks to the idea that number of times going up doesn't say a lot about how much of a skier you are. I think in this case you have to look a lot more at effort spent getting up to the mountain than anything else. If you grow up 5 minutes from an epic mountain you're basically a skier from the time you can stand until you choose to do something else. With someone thats got to drive 2 hours to a shitty mountain, thats a lot of dedication for a comparatively less amount of reward. The one bright side of that situation is, though, that you'll never take a day of skiing for granted in your life. Thats a skier in my book.