SAM Magazine-Whitefish, Mont., Feb. 27, 2009-On Feb. 24, the nearly 8,000 season pass holders at Whitefish Mountain Resort surpassed 1 billion vertical feet of skiing and snowboarding, as tracked by the resort's "Big Vertical" program. Resort officials were ecstatic to have an unfathomably large number to talk about-and a positive one at that.

"These kinds of really big numbers seem to be getting a lot of news coverage lately," said resort spokesperson Donnie Clapp, in the wake of the mortgage market collapse, meltdown on Wall Street and the resulting stimulus bill passed by Congress.

In 77 days of skiing between Dec. 10 and Feb. 24, Whitefish pass holders had skied and ridden a total of 1,008,115,366 vertical feet. They averaged more than 13,092,407 vertical feet per day. The most prolific skier in Whitefish was personally responsible for 2,618,428 vertical feet (an average of 34,005 vertical feet per day), but could not be persuaded to stop skiing long enough to comment for this report. \