Your group, on the mountain.
Slope Minder is a hand-drawn map of the mountains worth planning a trip around, and a way for a family or a group of friends to keep track of each other once they are on them.
Coming to the App Store this fall, for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch.
The map
Every resort is drawn, not photographed: the runs, the lifts, the trees, and the buildings, painted the way a good trail map is. Turn it, tilt it, and look down any run before you drop in. Tap a run for its length, its vertical, its steepest pitch, and which way it faces. Tap a lift for its ride time.
Eleven resorts are drawn: Big Sky, Jackson Hole, Vail, Beaver Creek, Aspen Snowmass, Telluride, Steamboat, Deer Valley, Park City, Sun Valley, and Mammoth.
The group
Start a group for the day or the week and everyone in it is on the map. The app works out what each person is doing (on a run, riding a lift, stopped) without anyone typing it.
Private by design
You are visible only to the people in a group you are sharing with, only while you share. Positions are end-to-end encrypted and never stored, so there is no history of where anyone has been. Browsing and skiing solo need no account at all. The privacy policy says exactly what leaves your phone.