APPS TAP INTO SNOW SPORTS
Skiers and snowboarders can get easy access to stats and keep track of friends
Runners aren’t the only ones obsessed with their stats. Skiers and snowboarders also love analyzing their performance. But unlike runners, skiers don’t have a wealth of apps at their fingertips. Still, there are some great apps for winter sports enthusiasts who want to get immersed in the details of their on-hill performance.
The best ski apps combine GPS, altimeters and other internal sensors found in most phones to track and log activity on the slopes. The stats you can follow include total number of runs, distance skied, average and top speed, longest run, tallest run and total calories burned. Some apps also allow you to keep track of your friends so you can meet up for lunch or at a specific lift. You can also compare stats at the end of the day, checking in on who skied which run and how long it took to get to the bottom. And some apps are sophisticated enough to identify the time you spent in lift lines versus the time you spent on the snow.
Admittedly, there are downsides to using an app on a ski hill. Getting your phone out of your jacket or ski pants isn’t the easiest of tasks, especially on cold days when your hands don’t want to leave your mitts.
And since most phones don’t respond well to the cold, it’s an even harder challenge to pull your phone out from under the layers needed to keep it warm enough to work during a typical Canadian day on the slopes.
If you have an Apple Watch Series 3, which is equipped with an altimeter and GPS, you can leave your phone under wraps. A recent update added snow sports to the list of apps, allowing skiers and snowboarders to gain full use of the activity-tracking feature of the watch.
Use Siri to open your apps and receive real-time updates and stats on your latest run directly from your wrist. Snowshoers and cross-country skiers can do the same, with all winter sports now gaining credit toward your daily exercise goal; you can also read your heart rate and tally your calorie burn.
The best apps allow you to turn them on before getting in your first run of the day and turn them off when the lifts close. Then you can check in with the app and revel in your day’s accomplishments as part of your routine. So for skiers who want better insight into what they do on the hill, here are a few apps that work on iPhones, Androids and the Apple Watch Series 3 to check out before the season comes to an end.
SLOPES
This popular app records all the stats skiers love — speed, number of runs accomplished, total vertical and total distance — in a concise, easy-to-read format. Just press start and let it track every move you make while on the slopes. The app works off your phone’s GPS, so you don’t need data or a cell signal, which makes it equally effective in the backcountry and at your favourite ski resort. If you want more, there’s a subscription option, Season’s Pass, for US$19.99; among other features, it includes satellite maps that let your relive your runs on the actual terrain you skied.
SKI TRACKS
Not just for downhill skiers and snowboarders, Ski Tracks also chronicles the activity of crosscountry skiers and snowshoers. The sensors built into smartphones are used to track distance, speed, calorie burn, vertical climbs and descents, similar to what runners and cyclists have been tracking for years. It’s probably the most basic of all the apps out there, but if you just want to record, review and save your stats, it gets the job done.
SNOWW
Snoww offers all the skiing stats you need, but excels at keeping friends connected on the hill and through accumulated daily activity. Skiers can use the leaderboard to see how they compare to other Snoww users worldwide in terms of number of runs completed, top speed and vertical descent. The app’s strength is the community it creates, and the opportunity to see how skiers measure up against their peers both near and far.
SNOCRU
Similar to Snoww in that it specializes in creating communities, this app does a great job at combining the social side of skiing with your social networks. It creates leaderboards, tracking stats by day, month or season, but its appeal lies in the ease of posting your ski experience on your social feeds and sharing with your friends on the mountain.
It provides weather and snow conditions, and tracks the locations of your friends on the hill. Keep your snow crew small or expand it to include all SNOCRU members around the world.