The Best Apps for Boarders and Skiers

With so many apps out there to make every aspect of our lives easier and more manageable, we thought we would round up some of our favourite ski-related apps on the market. With everything from pre-ski training to snow reports, cheap lift passes to avalanche awareness, these are the best apps to maximise your time spent on the mountain.

1. OFFGRID, Free with in-app purchases
   Have trouble switching off when it’s time to relax? Offgrid is the app for you.  With just one push, all incoming messages and calls are blocked (with the exception of your chosen contacts) and an automatic response is sent letting them know you can’t be reached for the moment. Once you are ready to connect with the world again, a detailed report listing what you missed out on whilst you were ‘off the grid’ is sent to you. A great app for those who have trouble leaving the online world behind for a few hours.
2. SkiFit, Free with in-app purchases
   Neil Maclean-Martin, is the founder of Chamonix’s premier physiotherapy clinic La Clinique du Sport. Offering a number of brief 8 minute exercises that can be done anywhere, this app is designed to help skiers get ski-fit before their skiing holiday, so they can maximise their time on the mountain when they arrive. All exercises have different intensities and are suitable for most abilities.
3. OnTheSnow Ski & Snow Report, Free
   This is the worlds most downloaded skiing and snowboarding app. With up-to-date daily snow fall and condition reports for over 2000 ski areas around the world, as well as live commentary from other users and snow alerts when your favourite areas get fresh snow, you’ll have all the information you need to find the best powder wherever you are.
4. SkiLynx, £2.29
   SkiLynx is perfect when you’re skiing with a big group and allows you to locate and communicate with your friends on the mountain. Using GPS and detailed trail maps, the app shows where everyone is in real time, as well as the slope difficulty of what they are on. The chat feature also allows you to send pre-set one touch messages. SkiLynx is currently only available in the USA.
5. Liftopia, Free
   This booking app finds some of the best deals when it comes to pre-booked lift tickets, lessons, rentals and any other ski or boarding related purchases. With thousands of deals up for grabs, you will find some of the lowest prices around, and the booking system is simple and easy to use. The app lets you save your favourite ski resorts and sends up-to-date snow conditions as well as all relevant deals.
6. Warren Smith Ski Academy App, Free with in-app purchases
   Although nothing makes up for actually getting on the mountain with an instructor, having a pocket guide is a great way to improve your skills or give you extra pointers when a lesson isn’t possible. With four categories – freestyle, moguls, carving and steep skiing, the lessons are 3-4 minutes long and aim to improve each of these areas of your skiing.
7. Snowboard Tips, £3.99
   Since we included a ski performance app – it’s only fair that we add one for the boarders too. Designed by Mathieu Bozzetto, an Olympic medal winning rider, this app has easy to follow video tutorials that improve and build up technique.
8. Mammut Safety, Free
   With some of the most popular avi transceivers on the market, it is fitting that Swiss mountaineering specialists Mammut would create a safety app. Easy to use, it allows you to access international avalanche bulletins and look up risk levels based on location and reported conditions. The app also has a compass, altimeter, shows your latitude & longitude coordinates and allows you to send an emergency message to a saved number with a single button click. Not bad for a free app!
9. FATMAP, Free with in-app purchases
   Designed for mountain adventures, Fatmap is a 3D mapping system created using satellite imagery. Skiers and snowboarders can check out popular ski areas in huge detail, viewing slopes from any angle and perspective. There are thousands of routes which have been contributed by mountain professionals, and each route contains a guidebook style description with terrain information and grades. The app is free, but you can upgrade to a premium version which includes features like high-res satellite imagery, advanced mapping and profiling, avalanche risk zones and crevasse zones.
10. Trace Snow, Free
    Trace Snow (formally known as Alpine Replay) allows you track every lift and run over the course of your day. They record speed, jumps, airtime, distance travelled and calories burned. At the end of the day, your routes are mapped out, and you are given a summary of all the statistics showing what you got up to over the course of the day.