WIRED WINTER mountain tech
We know you can’t resist a peek at your phone. by Jeremy Pugh
Y
ou’re supposed to be on vacation, but we know that you can’t resist checking your email to see if the deal went down, posting pow shots for friends back home or Yelping around for tonight’s dinner plans. Go ahead. Fake your way through that conference call from the lift.
Wi-Fi Abounds—Cellular service at most ski resorts is good enough for a quick call. Alta, for example, just upgraded service across the mountain. But the hitch to your online giddy up is often data, especially down in the folds of topography that make skiing here so amazing. Don’t worry, lodge-based Wi-Fi is prevalent. Last summer Snowbird made repairs to its tram and they baked (yes, like in an oven) a fiber-optic line into the cable. The line will de- liver HD levels to low-res webcams and speed up the free Wi-Fi in the Summit Lodge.
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Charge It Up—Cold can freeze a phone battery, but at Park City’s Miners Camp and Cloud Dine, you’ll find a wall of chargers where you can power up. At Deer Valley, just take your phone to guest services and they’ll happily charge it up for you. Or beef up your phone. Lifeproof’s burly
cases are snow, ice and pretty much every- thing-you-can-dish-out proof and also include onboard power packs to keep the juice flowing.
lifeproof.com
Killer Apps—There are lots of fitness-tracking apps out there, but few of them really get skiing. Most are built more for running or cycling and they’ll factor lift time into your average speed and won’t track vertical feet. No help. SNOC- RU, however, gets it. The app comes fully loaded with maps to North American resorts, which
makes for an accurate measure of your day’s stats. This is a key element of the social aspects of SNOCRU that allows you to throw down the gauntlet and create group and individual chal- lenges among your friends and, well, the world on its leaderboards.
snocru.com The Ski Utah app supports SNOCRU’s leaderboard.
EpicMix—If you are skiing or riding at a Vail Resort (Park City, here in Utah), get EpicMix. The free app tracks your progress around the mountain (through your pass and RFID scan- ners at the lifts) giving you vertical feet and lifts
ridden.This year the app will include EpicTime that serves up wait times at lifts around the mountain. And for the competitive (yes, you), the app drops a range of virtual pins earned for combinations of lifts and vertical feet, turning your day into a scavenger hunt.
epicmix.com
Stay connected at
skiutah.com/app
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