Invitation to Collaborate

One late winter day, just outside the Big Burn Patrol shack, my fellow patroller Gabi Benel and I asked JT Welden for a shot at improving the grooming boards situation on our ski area. We had a few ideas.

Last Saturday I peeled off the backing from the vinyl lettering and applied them to the signs without creating any bubbles. It is quite the peanut gallery we're auditioning in front of as well as such a high profile location at the bottom of the Sheer Bliss lift. Needless to say, I was proud of loading 3 prototype signs in the back of our car and take them home for the final refreshment of code and be placed on our Snowmass Ski Area this winter.

We developed signs for two locations: the bottom of the Cirque Poma lift and the bottom of the Sheer Bliss lift.
The signs display, on a color, LED matrix board, in real time, trail/ gated terrain status information from the Snowmass app. This information is currently received via a cellular signal. In case of loss of cell signal the boards will be able to be manually set. As soon as ethernet is available at the lift terminal, this automated information updates will be even more reliable.

During the development process, the responsibility of updating this information has been transferred to the ski patrol dispatcher.
Besides information on the open/closed/groomed status, we have left room for lift information to be displayed. Currently, information like ride times are in the app, however, wind holds are not being tracked.

Just like the ski patrol dispatcher now being directly in charge of updating terrain opening information, it may be possible to similarly shift this responsibility for grooming and lifts to the various departments.

Currently, there is information at the bottom of the Sheer Bliss lift on 9 trails in the gated terrain in the Cirque area. It now will display 24 trails, including groomed trails on the Big Burn.

The Aspen-Snowmass App keeps track of terrain openings, this information is retrieved by the new grooming boards and then displayed. We are reaching out to other departments to join us in keeping track and sharing their pertinent information in a similar way.
By using the Aspen-Snowmass App as the data source it creates consistency which then will be replicable anywhere across the company and beyond -imagine RFTA busses with terrain and lift status updates!

As ski patrollers, we know how much work goes into opening up terrain and how much our guests value up to date and accurate information. We believe we have found a way to do this.

For any feedback please email bigburnengineeringllc@gmail.com