Using your GPS on the Ski Slopes

Awhile back, I posted a couple of items about SnowRanger Ski Resort Maps. I had wanted to test out their software and report back on it, but alas, I'm not going to Tahoe or Coolorado this winter. I did however get in a brief trip this weekend to the Ski and Snowboard Park at Mt. Shasta (picture at left), and used my trusty Garmin GPSMap 60CS to record the track.

I was really curious to see how well this would work. I tethered my GPSr and stuck it in the outside mesh pocket of my CamelBak. The results are shown on an aerial photo generated using TopoFusion, at right.

It picked up a few stray track points, but generally it worked pretty well. You can probably pick out the chairlift in the picture! Shasta is a small ski park, and I don't think I would need a GPS for navigation even for a large park, but it was still a fun exercise.

Comments

[Stuart]

SnowRanger is a great product and definitely worth the outlay if you spend a fair amount of time sliding down mountains.

However, I've been developing a free alternative to this, based around geocoding all the lifts and lodges at each Tahoe resort. To date I've got most of the north shore resorts covered. I imagine this might be useful to your readers.

http://www.trailspotting.com/search/label/ski-lifts

This is a departure from the rest of my site which focuses on providing maps, reviews and GPS downloads for hiking & snowshoeing trails in Northern Californa.