Welcome to the 2026–2027 NASTAR Season
The gates are going up, the timing systems are being checked, and racers across the country are getting their skis ready for another winter.
NASTAR is the race anyone can enter: any age, any ability, at any hill that runs NASTAR. Every run gets you a time, a handicap and a reason to take one more.
Find your NASTAR hill and check with the resort for this winter’s racing days and times.
Your First NASTAR Run
Last season, more than half of everyone who raced was racing NASTAR for the first time. If you have watched from the side of the course and wondered about trying it, you will have plenty of company.
Take a run and see how it feels. You get a time and a handicap, and from there you can work toward a lower handicap and your next medal.
You can race with your kids, your parents or your grandparents, and plenty of people do: nearly one in ten racers raced on a family team last season.
The start list spans every age. More than a third of last season’s racers were under 18, and more than one in eight was under 10. At the other end, racers in their eighties and nineties were out there too, and one racer in their nineties started 23 times.
Your Second Run
One run gives you a starting point. Come back and see how you improve, whether that is next weekend or on your next ski trip.
Plenty of racers do exactly that. For the last two seasons, NASTAR racers have averaged about two and a half days on course, and better than six and a half runs each. In 2023–24, it was closer to two days and five and a half runs.
A few take it much further. Last season’s Most Active board was led by a racer who came out on 92 days, and another who recorded 376 runs.
The Racers Who Keep Coming Back
Some of last season’s racers have raced NASTAR for twenty seasons or more, and a few have raced every season since 1998. One of them is Richard Gedert, who took his first NASTAR run in January 1998, at 55. Twenty-nine seasons later, he is still racing in his eighties.
You do not have to race every winter to come back, either. About one in fifteen of last season’s racers returned after sitting out three seasons or more. Their race records were right where they left them.
Where the Racing Is Growing
NASTAR happens at local hills, on weeknights and weekend mornings, wherever a resort or club has built a program. Go often enough and you know the regulars and the crew running the course, and there is always someone to compare times with at the bottom.
These were among the fastest-growing NASTAR programs last season, by the number of racers who came out, against the season before:
- Trollhaugen, WI: up 80%
- Purgatory Resort, CO: up 54%
- Wild Mountain, MN: up 47%
- Montage Mountain, PA: up 44%
- Pats Peak, NH: up 39%
- Pine Knob, MI: up 27%
- Palisades Tahoe, CA: up 27%
- Gunstock Mountain, NH: up 23%
- Shanty Creek / Schuss Mountain, MI: up 22%
Deer Valley, UT and Aspen Mountain, CO were again the busiest NASTAR hills in the country.
For sheer repeat racing, look to Wachusett Mountain, MA. Its racers averaged more than five days on course last season, better than twice the NASTAR average, and better than fifteen runs each.
Thank you to the race crews, resorts and clubs who set those courses, and to the regulars who make new racers feel at home.
The New NASTAR.com
There is more of your racing on the new NASTAR.com than there has ever been.
Register and log in, and NASTAR.com becomes yours. Your race record pulls together your Results and Rankings from every season you have raced, with tabs for Notification preferences and for tracking your Buddies’ results. Registering is free, your NASTAR ID is permanent, and you should set one up for each of your racing kids too.
If you have raced before, look yourself up first rather than registering again. Your record is already there, and a This is me link on it will set up your login.
Leaderboards. Look up last season’s rankings, revisit an old season, or find a goal for the winter ahead. Alongside the national rankings there are boards for slalom, age group, snowboard and telemark, adaptive, and club, family and resort teams, going back to 2012–13. The Most Active board has nothing to do with speed at all.
Featured Racer tells the story of one racer at a time, the sort of person you might meet on the hill. Recent Races carries the latest results from hills around the country. And the Lifetime Resorts Club recognizes racers who have raced at 30 or more different NASTAR resorts.
Your Season Starts Here
Find your hill, check its racing schedule, and have your NASTAR ID ready before you go. Ask someone to come along, especially someone who has never tried it.
Whether it’s your first run or your twenty-ninth season, NASTAR is yours to race.
See you at the start gate.