Posts tagged chairlift
High-Tech Ski Resorts
21 year ago
by Eric Hoffman
in article
A recent post titled the Top 10 High-Tech Hotels, prompted me to think about technological innovations that have been adopted by ski resorts. So, without further ado, and in no particular order, the top high tech uses by ski resorts (I haven’t tied many of these to specific resorts as many are in use at multiple resorts):
- Epic Mix by Vail Resorts, taking RFID lift ticket scans and blending it with social media is an intriguing direction that we’ll all be watching in 2010-2011.
- Groomers using GPS, like PistenBuly’s SNOWsat, to more effectively groom trails by optimizing mountain travel and passes on each run.
- For skiers and riders that are searching for the best lift ticket deals, using the online only site, Liftopia is probably the best use of tech for searching out lift ticket deals.
- Ski resorts with all-mountain cellular coverage – this one isn’t really up to an individual resort, as cell tower placement is obviously driven by cellular providers, but it can be awfully nice to have cell service around a mountain.
- Renewable green power efforts, most notably the Jiminy Peak and Grouse Mountain on-mountain wind turbines, are a beneficial way to use technology to reduce carbon emissions as well as save money.
- RECCO avalanche rescue technology, which allows for a beacon style rescue that uses technology that is embedded in many ski boots and clothing and will even give directional bearing to many cell phones.
- High-speed detachable lifts, which have completely changed how we ski and ride – on the chairlift topic, does the addition of heated seats to a lift add a technological boost to lifts, or is it just something else to break?
I know I’ve only scratched the surface of how ski resorts are integrating technology into their operations, please add additional examples in the comments!
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The Vail Ski Lift Guy
13 years ago
by Eric Hoffman
in article
It took me a day but I’m ready to chime in on the…uhhh,… precarious position that an unfortunate skier wound up in, dangling while showing a full moon, the day after New Years at Vail. If you haven’t seen the photos they’re all over the web, with probably the best selection to be found at The Smoking Gun, although I’m impressed to say that the maggots over at Teton Gravity Research were on this back on the day it happened.
It’s almost mind-blowing to contemplate the unlikely sequence of events that occurred for this to happen, but it did and I only hope that the fellow to whom this happened has as good a sense a humor as did his photographer – did you know the he’s been suspended from his job and may be fired?!
Here are a couple of quick takeaways:
- ALWAYS look before you sit, this applies in general and not just with chairlifts!
- No matter where you go someone will have a way to document what’s going on because everyone has one or more of: a cell phone, a camera or a video camera.
- The web is as viral as ever, once the photos started to spread across the internet, they were everywhere in a matter of hours. I just did a Google search for “vail naked lift” and turned up over 90,000 search results of which 432 were news articles!
- Some bartender in Vail is going to be coming up with a cocktail named the “Hanging Moon,” I could write about a coffee drink here in Park City called the McMonkey’s Latte, but I digress.
After working in the ski industry for many years, I can honestly say that this is probably oddest thing that I’ve seen and I’m awfully glad that it didn’t happen anywhere around here – sorry Vail!
