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Quite a ‘feet’ for 75-year-old skier

Matt O'Neill

Many local skiers try to get on the slopes as much as possible.

A lot of those skiers rack up the vertical feet, but only a select few have reached the prodigious plateau of 1 million vertical feet.

Seventy-five-year-old Kenneth Myron was one of those few who skied enough runs to achieve the status of a million feet, making him the oldest skier on the South Shore to do so.



The most remarkable part of his feat is that he only picked up the sport 12 years ago.

“My first lesson was from a 6-year old,” Myron said. “My family and I went to Kirkwood in 1989 and my kids took me up the Reut.



“I was sitting at the top of the hill and took my skies off and walked down the hill to the blue chair. I got on the next chair next to a little boy and skied with him for three days. By the fourth day, I was on my own.”

For the next eight years Myron was a regular at Heavenly Ski Resort before switching to Sierra-at-Tahoe last season.

The resort offers an incentive program called ‘Vertical Plus,’ which hands out rewards for skiers for vertical feet skied in a season.

Once Myron reached about 45,000 feet he decided to go for the grand prize, airline tickets at a million feet.

“They give out those prizes and I thought ‘Hell, I might as well go for the plane tickets,’ ” Myron said.

He skied about 80-90 days this past season and was on the slopes until about 2:30 p.m. everyday he was out there.

Often Myron would get about 25 runs in a day and met all sorts of skiers on the slopes.

“Sometimes I would hook up with younger guys who were amazed at my age when I told them,” he said. “But other times I’d ski by myself or follow a fast skier down.”

To keep in shape for his demanding winters, Myron said he works out at the Sierra Athletic Club and works around his yard.

“I usually leg press about 500 pounds during my workout,” he said. “I start out with 20 reps of 200 and work my way up.”

Recently, a neighbor of his toppled a tree and cut it into 400-pound chunks, which Mryon moved into his yard for exercise.

As for his feat, Myron doesn’t look upon it as earth-shattering – just something he likes to do in the winter.

“I thought it was pretty good up there (at Sierra) and I started putting on the feet,” he said.


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