I’m on a roll. I posted to the blog twice in one day 6 Feb, skied a few hours that afternoon, and I’m catching up on Season 1 of Walking Dead that I’ve DVR’d.
(Today, 7 Feb, was the BEST day of this ski season. 5-6 inches of powder. It shows how starved for soft snow we are around here.)
Copper Mountain and Winter Park Colorado have each had over 20″ of snowfall in the last two weeks.
Tue. 29 Jan.
I skied Winter Park. It was cold, cold, cold, cold, cold. Fingers were frosty from the start and pulling the phone out gloveless for a quick snapshot didn’t help. It was sunny and pretty though.
Did I mention it was cold? (All photos were taken with an iPhone5. Click on any photo to enlarge it in a separate window. Use your browser Back button or function to return to this page.)
Panoramic Lift was closed today, probably due to the EXTREME cold. My mama said there’d be days like this. The skiing had improved considerably with 4-5″ of fresh ‘powder’ in places. Vasquez Ridge/Pioneer Express were fun. Easy powder cruising, not crowded.
Fri. 1 Feb.
Winter Park again. Only cold today. Good skiing at Vasquez Ridge again. The Chili Hut at the top of the Pioneer Express was open (Fri-Sun) and the green chili was excellent. Panoramic Express was closed again, probably due to whiteout today. The top is treeless and it was in heavy clouds.
I recently discovered ski run tracking apps. Despite my career in information technology continued innovations keep me perpetually awestruck. (Gob-smacked as they would say in England.) Winter Park has a dedicated app by RTP Livepass. It is free, and an amazing run tracker.
This app is configured to link to my Rocky Mountain Plus Pass (Winter Park/Copper Mountain). It shows the number of days skied (15 as of 1 Feb), number of scans (47, your pass is scanned every time you go through a base lift line, somewhat irrelevant to this tracking app IMO), number of inches of snowfall in the last 24 hours (2) and the mid-mountain base snow depth (46″ (60+ is ‘normal’)). I don’t know who is in the photo.
You start the app at the beginning of your ski day. It then tracks that day’s activity and saves the info. You can see the days you’ve skied:
You can look at a summary graph of your day. The flat plateau in the center was a stop for lunch.
You can look at the runs on a particular day and see the summary for each run. These are the last six runs on 1 Feb:
You can look at a single run and see the detail for that run. I know this run was from the top of Super Gauge Express chairlift down the Sleeper run to the Mary Jane parking lot:
You can see a terrain map with your ski runs super-imposed. The straight lines are chairlift rides up the mountain:
There is also a map of the Winter Park ski runs. I skied the runs off the Pioneer Express lift a lot during my two days at WP that week.
Mon. 4 Feb.
Nice day. Snow is packed to hard-packed again. I’m at Copper Mountain ski area.
RTP, the company that makes the Winter Park run tracking app, makes a generic app for other ski areas. The app is free and you pay $.99 for your particular ski area map. It hasn’t been updated for iPhone5 and doesn’t work well enough to make it even worth the $.99. It does have an interesting location tagging feature used with the phone camera. It tags runs, lifts, etc. as you move the camera around:
The run tracking is the same as the Winter Park app. It seemed to work well except that speeds were inaccurate and it got frequent GPS errors. It said my max speed was 121 mph. Uh, not quite. A major disadvantage, unlike the WP app, is that you can’t access the data unless you are within the ski area GPS boundaries. That’s no fun! I do not recommend this app. (I found something better.)
Wed. 6 Feb.
The SKI TRACKS app. It’s $.99. It does everything the Winter Park/RTP/Realski app does and a lot more. It knows I’m at Copper Mountain without downloading a map. Check out these screenshots and look at all the data:
At 18 minutes:
At 1hr 23min:
At 2hr 36min:
Lift and run summary:
Lift analysis:
Run analysis:
Hourly summary:
Hour analysis:
Mile grouping:
Mile analysis:
Standard map with numbered lifts and runs done:
Satellite map with lifts and runs:
Tracking silhouette:
Map with animated blue mark that moves up the lift or run (see the blue pause button):
Altitude and speed graph summary:
All this for $.99. Technology is amazing.
Fri. 7 Feb: POWDER DAY!!
It’s a sign of how desperate I am for soft snow when I’m at the chairlift for 9am opening in order to get fresh tracks in 5-6″ of snow. Today was the best skiing I have done this season.
Nearly fresh tracks on Copperfields run:
At the top of Rendezvous lift, looking at hikers walking up Union Bowl to catch more powder:
Closer view of the hikers:
Moi (me):
Ski Tracks summary:
Storm King Poma lift:
Jacque Peak from the top of Storm King:
Have you had enough skiing? Have a great day.
Related articles (Should I check another app?):
- Google Adds 38 Ski Slopes to Google Maps App (abcnews.go.com)
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