Thursday, August 30, 2018

Fatmap, The 3D Ski Mapping App

Fatmap, The 3D Ski Mapping App


You may have seen our last ski app review on PowderQuest, now it’s time to introduce another useful and quite intelligent ski app, called Fatmap – the app that helps you kickstart your adventures and acts as a guide on your journeys.

What is Fatmap?

Fatmap is a 3D ski mapping app, providing you with high resolution satellite imagery and the ability to plan your routes smarter, safer and with confidence. With technology constantly developing for the better, this app reinvents the way ski enthusiasts interact and explore the slopes and it’s pretty awesome. It provides you with information that you would normally miss or would not expect when you’re out on runs, so you can discover new attractions and cool things around pistes on the go. Want to plan a route that tests your ski or snowboard skills? Or have you ever thought about stopping at a restaurant you want to visit in the Meribel or Courchevel? This app has got you covered.

So what does it do?

Fatmap currently covers over 50 ski summer and winter resorts across the world, both summer and the app contains detailed information on pistes, lifts, mountain gradients, parks, first aid and a whole lot more. It acts as a great guide if you’re looking for a bit of structure during your ski trip and it’s extremely beneficial if you’re one to plan your routes in advance, so you know exactly what to expect when you’re on the slopes. Rather than trying to read a piste map and carry it along with you on the slopes, the app allows you to plan and navigate your routes with an interactive 3D map – and one thing is for certain, you can’t do that with a paper piste map! Piste maps are often inaccurate and difficult to work out for many. But let’s talk about the key features of the ski app:
  • Coloured coded map when viewing terrain tools
  • You can see the 3D dimensional shape of runs, dips, twists and turns
  • Showcases risk zones e.g. avalanche, crevasse
  • GPS enabled navigation so you can track your routes
  • Freeride option provides you with various freeride routes
  • Provides you with detailed information regarding lifts in the resort
  • Location sharing lets you share your location with friends
  • Emergency tool offers essential information if an emergency does occur

App review video

Take a look at our quick, 60 second review video on the app and let us know what you think!

Pros and Cons

powder quest app review

Our Rating

Fatmap

There are many great features on Fatmap, especially if you’re thinking of exploring the mountains alone or if you want to check in on your friends to see which routes they are trying to conquer. The content within the app is detailed and easy to view, catered to all types of skiers and snowboarders.

There is a free version of the app and the premium version. The free version only allows you to use a few of the features, so to unlock Fatmap’s true potential, the premium version allows access to all of your maps and features offline. You don’t have to worry about interrupted performance or your mobile phone data bill, you can purchase the premium version for £9.99 a month or £28.99 for the year. Don’t forget, you can use Fatmap for other outdoor activities too such as hiking or mountain biking too!

Sunday, August 12, 2018

Morzine Avoriaz 2020 Developments

Morzine Avoriaz 2020 Developments


New lifts and piste developments will grace Morzine over the next 20 years. The traditional market town is part of the Portes du Soleil ski area and a speedy lift, known as the Express Morzine Avoriaz will whisk skiers from the centre of Morzine to the Prodains gondola lift in less than 20 minutes, making the resorts easily accessible for skiers and snowboarders wishing to explore more slopes.
Morzine is a resort located in the heart of one of the most extensive ski regions in the Alps – Portes du Soleil. It’s one of the closest major French resorts to Geneva airport and boasts over 650km of marked ski runs which makes it great from beginners to advanced skiers and snowboarders. The town itself is a traditional market town that continues to outdo itself each year and we can see why. If you’re considering Morzine for your next ski trip, first of all – great choice and second, make sure to read All about Morzine for some inside tips and suggestions for food, drink and more.

Let’s go back a few years..

Morzine 1930's
The lifts of Morzine have come a long way since 1963
The mayor of Morzine, Gerard Berger has expressed his interest to link both of the resorts together for quite some time and plans are finally being put into action. But lets go back a few years so we can paint a better picture for you.
A 30 year deal was signed in 1962 to develop the Avoriaz plateau in to a superb ski resort with great snow and pistes that all skiers and snowboarders would love. This was achieved by opening the original Prodains lift in 1963 (which was updated in 2013), followed by developers purchasing 82 hectares of pasture for just 30,000 Francs and then work for building the resort began. While there are a few ways to get to Avoriaz from Morzine, a direct link just makes it even better.

Project Morzine Avoriaz 2020

morzine avoriaz developments 2020
Morzine Avoriaz 2020 Developments Presentation
The project Morzine Avoriaz 2020 is sure to pave a way for a better future for both of the resorts. Construction is planned for 2019, kicking it off with the Express Morzine-Avoriaz lift and completions scheduled for 2021. The new development budget is a large €35 million with a further €11.6 million to be spent on surrounding infrastructure. Below we break down the developments that will be put into action for Morzine and Avoriaz.
  • The base station will be located at the top of the Rue du Bourg
  • A tunnel will be built from the bottom of the Pleney lift to a new lift station overlooking the supermarket carpark
  • To better connect the new lift station and the Pleney, the tunnel’s moving walkway will transport skiers and snowboarders to the new Express Morzine Avoriaz lift.
  • Beneath the new lift station in the area known as La Plan, (the current Carrefour carpark) there will be a new bus station
Overall, the new high speed lift will benefit Morzine and Avoriaz with a much faster connection across the valley, whilst also making it easier for skiers and snowboarders who are staying in Les Gets. Morzine TV published a visualisation of the planned project, we cut out the interesting bit so you can see a short video highlighting the development. You can view the full video here.

Piste developments in Morzine

A total of €147.9 million has been allocated to the piste and lift infrastructure developments within the Morzine ski area, including the huge project ‘Morzine Avoriaz 2020’. But what else will be going on in the ski resort?
From 2025 onwards, new lifts and pistes will be created, with both Tour and Choucas highlighted for development. Not only is the resort improving itself by widening it’s ski area to improve skiers and snowboarder experience, but the village centre and the outskirts of the resort are in for some TLC. They will be adding a pavement to the Poute de la Plagne which widens the Route d’Avoriaz as well as creating 600 new parking spaces within a 5 minute walk of the Pleney lift.
Morzine will be busy for the next few years developing the popular resort to be better and we’re happy to be able to see it’s progress. In the meantime, if you’ve been hunting for a ski trip to Morzine but haven’t been able to find suitable accommodation as of yet, our catered Chalet Chamois D’or provides stunning panoramic mountain views. Don’t forget to keep up to date with our latest catered and self catered offers either so you can treat yourself!
Morzine Resort

Wednesday, August 8, 2018

Managing snow

Managing snow



How do ski resorts ensure the pistes are in the best possible condition through a season?

Ensuring holiday makers can enjoy the snow is vital to a healthy ski industry but of course the weather may have other plans. Ski resorts are employing an increasingly diverse toolkit of snow management techniques to bring order to the chaos. The long term snow forecast is uncertain, climate change is clearly having an effect on the Alps but it’s hard to know what that will mean for skiers. A study by the Swiss environmental office predicted that all European small and medium sized glaciers will have melted entirely by 2050 and glacial resorts seem to agree. Tignes, a high altitude resort with 9 months of skiing a year thanks to its glacier is planning to build an indoor snow centre at 2000m which could indicate they feel their glacier’s days may be numbered. So we thought we’d take a look at the how snow management works today and wonder at what the future may hold.

Piste bashers


These mighty and fascinating vehicles are the workhorse of snow management. They come in all shapes and sizes but a typical model costs about quarter of a million euros and can weigh upwards of 10 tonnes. They use hydraulic blades, rotary tillers and piste shaping equipment to shape our slopes as they crawl around the mountainside in the middle of the night. The drivers are highly trained and have the best possible knowledge of the mountain, even in today’s world of technology their personal knowledge and observational skills are the main reason piste bashers manage to find their way around the mountain safely night after night. The art of piste preparation could fill entire volumes, let alone an article maybe one day we’ll get the chance to go out with a real piste basher driver and tell a more complete story.

Snowmaking

Snowmaking is commonplace in major resorts around Europe but the scale of snowmaking varies a lot from one resort to another and it is growing every season.
From the Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism and their 2016 study into snow management operations in French ski resorts
This survey confirms that the snow conditions are a major priority for ski resort operators to provide comfortable skiing conditions, to ski back down to the village or even to connect with neighbouring resorts. The required minimum snow depth is shared by most resorts, decreasing from 60 cm in February to 40 cm in April with a minimum 40 cm to maintain regardless the date. Snowmaking also appears as the major method to mitigate the dependency to natural snow conditions.Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism
snow cannon diagram
The principle is simple, when the air is cool enough (-1.5˚c) water and air are fired into a funnel together and then out into the air to become snow. The modern mechanics of snowmaking cannons are complex and advanced. The cannons themselves are able to atomise huge amounts of water to form large sheets of snow that shower onto the pistes below but the cannons are only half the story.
To feed a system of powerful snow cannons you need deep reservoirs of water at high altitude and the infrastructure to keep them filled and able to deliver water to the cannons on demand. This can mean major investment for ski resorts but it appears the resorts are finding it well worth it. As concerns about the climate grow the scale of snowmaking across the Alps is set to continue to grow.

Storing snow

Storing or farming snow sounds crazy but it has become increasingly common for ski resorts to literally stockpile snow from one season through to the next. As it turns out a big enough pile of snow at a high altitude will loose only 10-30% of it’s volume over the sunny months when an insulating system is employed. We saw this happening over the summer and wrote about it in our article snow farming in Courchevel.
Resorts in France, Switzerland and Austria are looking after their own snow stash through this very summer and it should make all the difference when the season draws near. A range of insulating methods are being used, tarpaulins, plastic matting and even sawdust have been shown to be effective. In the Swiss ski area of Andermatt-Sedrun they are using some kind of fleece to save snow & were kind enough to make a video explaining all about their techniques.

How technology is improving snow management

Satellite coordinated systems are not a thing of the future, they exist today. Naturally today most piste grooming vehicles are using GPS positioning on some level as backup navigation to their excellent mountain knowledge and for location in the case of an avalanche or other accident. Systems are being developed to allow for more effective management of a piste basher fleet. Val Thorens of the Three Valleys employ the state of the art SNOWsat system that allows them pinpoint every vehicle in the network in all weathers and good old Caterpillar offer a system offering similar features. Centralised management of the snow management effort brings lots of potential benefits for example finding the the most optimum routes both for snow quality and fuel economy.
snowsat piste sytem Better information on snow depth can allow resorts to make the right choices, see problems developing early and know when there’s no need to use snowmaking machines. How do you get accurate information on the volumes of snow around the mountains in your ski resort? Systems like those from Sensoft use ground penetrating radar (GPR) and GPS mapping to produce 3D maps of the snowlike and depth. How long will it be before they mount these monitoring systems on drones and get a full survey every day?
Drones are likely to be playing all kinds of roles in the ski resort of the future. Monitoring conditions and activities are tasks ideally suit automated flying vehicles, drones are already used to survey buildings and landscapes at altitude, it won’t be long before they are carrying more specialist equipment and performing more automated functions.
We may find uses for automated vehicles for all kinds of snow management tasks but we expect it’ll be a while before piste bashers drive themselves around the slopes at night. That job is harder than it looks and it looks pretty hard indeed.
If pressures on the climate continue to affect ski conditions, ski resorts can be expected to expand and refine their current snow management methods whilst continuing to innovate new ways of giving us the winter sports experiences we love so much.
We hope technology will offer further solutions to the problem of snow. Furthermore we hope that the driving forces behind climate change can be tamed and that the Alps will remain a haven of winter sports and natural beauty.

Saturday, August 4, 2018

16 Embarrassing Skiing Faux Pas

Linda Marsh is involved in the day-to-day running of Cophall Parking, one of Gatwick’s oldest off-airport parking and valet services. The 24-hour business that started with just a couple of family members and a single minibus now has 50 staff and a fleet of vehicles.

“In the winter, many of our customers are skiers and boarders, and we love hearing stories from the slopes on their return,” she says. “Although quite a few of them involve the embarrassing behavior of their fellow skiers.” READ ON

Partying Hard In Morzine and Avoriaz

  Partying Hard In Morzine and Avoriaz ...