EpicMix shows who's king and queen of the slopes
- Details
- Created on Wednesday, 12 January 2011 19:44
- Written by Dena Rosenberry
Snowboarders passed under a radio frequency reader at Breckenridge Ski Area last week. Mark Reis, The Gazette
By Dave Philipps, The Gazette
For some reason, ski culture has always been as much about talking skiing as it has been about actually doing it.
Base-area bars survive on daily bouts of aprés ski braggadocio: steeps that were conquered, rocks that were dropped, powder that was destroyed.
“It’s a culture of sharing,” said Mike Slone, a longtime skier who is the social media manager for Vail Resorts. “As long as there have been epic days, people have been talking about them.”
But what happens to those tales of epic days when we increasingly replace face-to-face story swapping with Facebook updates, Twitter tweets and blog posts?
Vail Resorts’ answer is EpicMix.
EpicMix is a website and mobile app that tracks skiers’ time on the mountain — vertical feet skied, terrain covered — then serves it up in digital tidbits that skiers can blast out to friends and family.
It is one of a number of electronic advances that ski areas have rolled out in order to connect to an increasingly plugged-in crowd.
“We’re just bringing that culture of sharing into the digital age,” Slone said.
System began as convenience
It all started in 2008 — digital eons ago — when the ski resort giant added tiny radio frequency identification chips (RFIDs) to most of its lift passes.
It was meant as a convenience for customers: Lift operators could wave a scanner without skiers having to take their passes out of their jackets. But soon Vail started using the electronic chips to collect information on use and traffic patterns.
“In the years since, we’ve had this explosion of i-Phones and apps that track movement and people updating their friend networks constantly,” said Slone. “The world has changed.
“We have a new generation of skiers who don’t even know what life was like before e-mail,” he said. “We wanted to do something for them.”
So this summer Vail’s five mountains (Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Keystone, and Heavenly in California) added RFID scanners at the bottom of its lifts to record when and where every skier (with a chip-embedded pass or lift ticket) is on its mountains.
You can log onto EpicMix .com and see your stats for the day — how many runs you made, how many vertical feet you skied.
“It’s sick,” said Bryan Hollenbeck, a 22-year-old snowboarder from Denver who was skiing at Breckenridge last week. “My friends are on it, we can compare our stats. That was something we could never do before.”
Skiers and snowboarders cruise Peak 8 at Breckenridge. With EpicMix, they'll know exactly how many vertical feet they shredded in a day. Soon, an app will allow them to find one another on the mountain.
Enhances the experience
In the past, most skiers measured their season by counting days on the slopes.EpicMix allows you to measure your season down to the vertical foot. There is even a leader board that shows you where you rank for the day, the week, the entire season. (A Vail local with 1.5 million vertical feet is currently ranked No. 1 this season.)
Beyond numbers, EpicMix awards you virtual pins when you reach certain goals, such as skiing 175,000 vertical feet (Superfly pin) or skiing on a day with more than a foot of fresh snow (Blizzard pin).
There are pins for kids, too, and pins easily earned by skiers who visit only a day or two a season; they appear automatically on a skier’s online EpicMix profile.
“Our goal was to enhance the experience without interfering with it,” said Slone.
EpicMix is also a boon for Vail’s advertising. At a time when traditional ad vehicles like magazines are foundering, EpicMix lets skiers spread the word through Facebook.
“The impact it has is something we never could achieve on our own,” said Slone.
A mobile version showing lift-line traffic and location of friends and family on the mountain should be unveiled in the next two weeks. (It is months behind schedule.)
Minor privacy concerns
All this tracking and measuring understandably makes some people nervous, as if Big Brother were watching them, even when they are on the mountain. A former Breckenridge ski instructor went as far as developing a sleek $5 sleeve he calls the Ski Pass Defender that keeps EpicMix from reading the chip on your lift pass.
But Breckenridge spokeswoman Kristen Petitt says there is little point. No one’s ski information is shared unless they choose to share it via sites like Facebook.
“We’ve been tracking people and collecting information about them anyway for years,” she said with a wry smile. “With EpicMix, we just finally let you see that information.”
She agrees there are privacy concerns.
“If you are friends with your boss on Facebook,” she said, “think twice about calling in sick to go skiing. If you post your EpicMix stats to Facebook, you’ll be in trouble.”
Encourages more skiing
EpicMix is already changing the way people ski, said Austyn Williams, a Breckenridge employee out skiing the mountain’s bowls on a recent morning.
“The pins encourage you to go places you might not, to visit the other mountains and lifts, to explore,” she said.
There is a Polar Bear pin for skiing when the high is below zero degrees.
“I probably would not have gone out that day, but I did, and I got a pin.”
Beyond that, she said, EpicMix encourages skiers to take more runs.
“I can see my friends’ stats,” she said. “And I’m way behind. Way behind. I have to do some skiing.”
Austyn Williams said EpicMix already has changed her riding habits; she'll ride more to try to match her friends and try new places or adverse conditions to earn virtual pins.
IN A NUTSHELL
What is EpicMix?
A website that can be linked to any Vail Resorts season pass or PEAKS lift ticket. It allows skiers to track their stats and earn virtual pins.
Where do I see it?
Online at EpicMix.com. The mobile app should be released by the end of January. it’s free to consumers.
Is EpicMix cool?
Yes, because it counts days and vertical feet skied, and the website shows a leaderboard of those who have skied or ridden the greatest amount.
Is linking EpicMix to Facebook cool?
You probably shouldn’t link EpicMix to your Facebook page because it will send constant updates when you ski which will annoy your friends.
Get pinned
The chip in a skier’s season pass tracks each time she boards a lift. Once she skis a certain number of vertical feet, she'll earn a pin. She could earn another each time she rides a new mountain.
Weather
Current Contests
