FIRST CHAIR
RUN

First Chair Run is a free ski game that plays in your browser. There is nothing to install and no account required. There is no timer: ski as far as you can, and ride the lift back up when the mountain catches you.

You start where the lift drops you, at first light or under the stars, on an empty mountain. Steer with the arrow keys, with A and D, or by holding the side of the screen you want to move toward. Thread a gate and both its flags turn lime. Hit a kicker square and you fly; land straight. Hit a tree trunk or a rock and you fall, and you can get up where you fell and keep skiing, or ride the lift back up.

There are two slopes, and the pitch of each changes as you go down: steeper in places, easing in others, the same every run. The HUD shows it in degrees. Easy rolls between about 8 and 18 degrees in a wide corridor with little standing in it. Difficult opens at 17 degrees and steepens within the first few hundred metres to between 25 and 41, with tighter bends and more to avoid as you ski farther. Point downhill to gather speed; carve across the slope to steer around what is in your way. Where the piste forks, choose your side at the last moment. Choose one of eight mountains, from Vail to Stowe, for a different skyline and different lodge stops; your records still belong to the two slopes.

You are not alone up there. A skier in blue and a rider in red will race you to a finish banner. The region's animals wander onto the piste, and you can chase them, but you will never catch one. Look out for a black bear family at a trash can. On a night run there are fireworks over the valley. Before you drop in, choose your gear: skis or a snowboard, your jacket, helmet and goggles.

Your best run on each slope is kept on this device, and signed-in players also keep their bests with their account. Once you have one, a marker waits out in the fog at the point where it ended. Coming up on that marker, and going past it, is the whole game.

Press P or tap Pause to take a breath. A lodge beside the trail offers an optional stop: steer into its marked turnout or tap Stop at the lodge. Explore a home on that mountain, or keep skiing. Your run waits while you browse.

The homes at the lodge stops are real, and they are ours to look after: places on the mountain you chose, drawn at random, a different one at each stop, such as Lion Square Lodge East 113 in Lionshead Village, Vail, BlueSky Breckenridge #413 by the Snowflake lift, Lichenhearth #4 in Snowmass Base Village, and Shoshone 1922 in Big Sky's Mountain Village. Your distance reads in vertical feet, the number skiers actually compare, and a steeper slope earns more of it.

We are First Chair Destinations, and we look after around 3,000 vacation homes across 25 ski mountains in Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, cared for by local teams who live in each town. We built this with mVara, for the reason anyone builds a ski game. If it leaves you wanting the real version, start with the destinations, or read Trail Notes for what the season is doing.