A New Way to Navigate the Slopes: With Real-Time Geospatial Data
Offering sunny blue skies, the periodic blizzard, freshly groomed slopes, and a chance for family bonding time, ski resorts across the United States attract skiers and snowboarders of all ages and abilities from late fall through early spring. Even in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020/21 winter season brought an estimated 10.5 million snow enthusiasts to US ski areas—making it the fifth-best year on record—according to the National Ski Areas Association.
When visiting a new ski resort or taking to the slopes with people of different skill levels, it can be difficult for everyone to find the right meeting spot, stay on trails that aren’t too technical, and navigate through a whiteout. But with Snow Mappy, a new mobile app from Esri startup partner Mappy, skiers and snowboarders can now use location intelligence to find their way around the mountain. The app also provides resort operators with anonymized user movement patterns so they can get a better idea of how visitors traverse the slopes and engage with resort services.
Snow Mappy has three primary functions: find, navigate, and interact. Users can search for amenities and locate their friends and family on interactive 2D and 3D maps. And the app, which is available for download on iOS and Android devices, provides network routing based on user-defined skill levels.
“Snow Mappy is perfect for anyone who needs to see where they are on the mountain when they are not near a trail sign, wants route planning ideas tailored to their level, and wants to meet up with friends or family at a specific location,” said Karyn Nolan, cofounder and CEO of Mappy.
The company, which Nolan founded in 2019, develops mobile apps and provides geospatial analytics to revolutionize the guest experience at ski resorts and other attractions. Snow Mappy is the company’s first app and was inspired by Nolan’s personal experience of trying to keep up with her skilled snowboarding husband.
“My husband is from Utah and is an expert skier and snowboarder. I grew up in California and am at an intermediate level, at best. Often, we would go to the top of the mountains, he would disappear down a run, and I would suddenly find myself confused, knowing I could inadvertently end up on a double-black diamond or the wrong part of the mountain,” she said. “I’ve been in the geospatial industry for 25 years, and as I was pulling out large, unwieldy paper maps, I thought, there has to be a better way!”
Nolan leveraged her experience in the geospatial industry to find experts to create the app. First, she needed to build the technical architecture leveraging ArcGIS software. This led her to attend a technical workshop for developers at the 2019 Esri User Conference (Esri UC). Given that Nolan was not a developer by trade, the instructor recommended that she attend the developer clinic hosted by Esri Services at the Esri UC Expo. There, Nolan connected with Josh Peterson, a developer consultant at Esri, for a face-to-face discussion about her ideas.
“I felt like this light bulb had gone off over my head when I was sitting with Josh, sharing my big idea. I wasn’t sure it was doable, and I was trying to figure out if I could afford to jump in with both feet. Josh gave me the confidence to give it a whirl,” Nolan recalled. “He outlined the specifics of how to develop the app in a way that felt doable, so it began to be more than just an idea.”
Nolan’s vision for the app was to modernize the winter sporting experience by blending the fun of skiing and snowboarding with geospatial technology in a platform that provides real-time navigation and connection. But for her, leveraging GIS technology in an app environment for consumer use was no easy feat.
“It’s very rare to find crossover between app developers and GIS,” said Nolan. “Esri’s technology is very powerful, but making sure that app developers are utilizing all the tools properly has been a challenge.
