Cliffs

a lot of the time it is known cliffs that have known heights, but obviously they change throughout the year. A cliff at snowbird King Con or King Kong whatever is said to be a 40 ft. So I called it 40 when I dropped it. It was a big dump year though so it was probably 30 at the most. A lot of it is done like that... no one really brings in tape measures, its just an estimate.

I would measure from where you left the snow to where you landed, myself.

yea, it's funny hearing noobs/foreign people/exaggerators talk about that "30 footer" they dropped on a run that doesn't have anything bigger than 15.

The way I look at it, and try to get other to look at it as well is by relating it to other heights you are aware of. The 10m diving board at the swimming pool is around 30ft. Once you tell that to the person that claimed the 30ft cliff they usually shut up and realize they were way off.

But as for your question about how you judge it, for me it's just experience dropping cliffs. I'm slowly getting better at judging height, but sometimes I am way off myself. example being earlier in the week we were at Retallack and we were talking about this big drop across the bowl, we started guessing how big it was, and I threw out 90ft. I got laughed at because everyone else thought it was more like 150... as far as how big the cliff actually was - who the fuck knows. I could have been right for all I know. I think the biggest cliff I ever dropped with skis on my feet is 40ft, and I say this because we looked at pictures and did some rough measuring based on that.