Ski Tracks Reviews

by RoshuaJogers

I've used SkiTracks since 2012 and it has always worked well. It's been good to see it improved along the way. Last year I was able to use it on my watch and I thought that was really awesome until today. At the end of a fantastic day of boarding it failed to transmit the data to my iPhone X. This was with the Apple Watch 2. All I have left of my data is the picture I took of the summary screen when I saw the "End" button was not responsive.

I have a few more days to be on the mountain this week and I can say I won't be using the watch app any more. Funny thing, this morning we were trying to install SkiTracks on my wife's AppleWatch 3 for her to use and it was no where in the lost of apps to install on the watch even though it was installed on her phone. I should've taken that as an omen.

Not a happy user of this watch app. It's gotta go from my watch and I'm going to see what my options are if any for data recovery and/or export.

by Dave From Rome

I believe SkiTracks may be contributing to a breed of skier trying to post a new high speed by the end of the day. I’ll confess that when I first used it, I puffed up my chest at cracking the speed of sound. I showed SkiTracks to a friend, he downloaded it, went out and came in boasting he had topped my speed! 56 mph on a blue trail! Then I noticed friends of mine posting speeds in excess of 60 MPH on trails populated by unpredictable snowboarders and beginner to intermediate skiers.

Speed is thrilling! I love it! The new skis allow you to carve very high speed turns. We become dangerous controlled missles. High speed skiers defend themselves by saying they are in control.

This past winter I turned SkiTracks off during a winter ski vacation. I tried to focus on going slower and enjoying the view. I got hit by a kamikaze not far from the base of Sterling at Deer Valley. 10 breaks in 7 ribs, pneumothorax, punctured lung, and a bit of internal bleeding. I’m old on a blood thinner. Surgery and 6 days in the Intermountain Trauma Center.

Was it the apps fault? No but the topic of Max Speed bragging came up in discussions afterwards. My neighbors wife got taken out and their child almost killed by a straight line boarder.

SkiTracks is great for seeing where you went and how much vertical or steepness.

Food for thought! I’m lucky to be alive. There are some that are not.

by Mr Squirrel

I have used SkiTracks for years with no complaints, until this week it tracked how many runs you did and how much you skied downhill. Now it combines both ascent and descent making it kinda useless (you could already see ascent info in a smaller section before) and doesn’t display the number of runs anymore but instead shows the ascent slope which is a totally useless metric.

EDIT: apparently now you have to select the activity as “skiing” in the little menu you get on the button on the top right to get it to display the way it always used to. They need to either make there be a default setting that comes across unless you change it or have it be a part of the “start” process yo select an activity.

by Phillipsdf

Update: I’m afraid I’ve lowered my rating of SkiTracks again, this time down to 2 stars. Apparently, using the Apple Watch to control SkiTracks is buggy as hell. 14,000 vertical feet translating to 68 miles of travel and other weirdness. But the worst is their ‘Analyze’ function: 12 runs/14,000 ft changes to 1 run/28 ft — and it appears that the function actually DESTROYS THE ORIGINAL DATA. To top it off the developer’s solution thus far is “well, don’t use the watch for this”. I’m now exploring alternatives.

This’ll be my third year using SkiTracks, this year adding an Apple Watch to my ecosystem. I stay with SkiTracks over the alternatives because it continues to focus on actual skiing while most of the others are turning into social apps that happen to track skiing as an afterthought.

My rating would be 5 stars if the developer would add turn tracking like they suggested they would a year ago. If another developer starts providing that, it may convince me to try a new app.

by Hongwu1

I’ve used SkiTracks for over 8 seasons. Something went haywire this year. About a third of my runs are no longer tracked, and I’m on mountains that are well covered by 5g/lte. There seems to be some bug where if you stop for a while, say for lunch, it won’t pick back up no matter what you do.

Today after a 30 minute lunch, I knew to check it and if it was still around tracking. It had stopped. I saved what I had, started over, and it didn’t take until the 4th attempt, after I had skied another 5-10,000 feet of vertical. As an end user, I wouldn’t be able to guess what’s going on. Looking at my Google location history, that was tracking where I was...so?

by AvalancheAirik

Sure wish the watch app correctly communicated with SkiTracks on my phone to accurately show the status. Paused tracking on my watch, then resumed it on my watch. Showed it was recording. 45 min I checked my phone because the watch vertical seemed off and noticed it never actually started recording. Watch shows the correct time elapsed... I do full stack web development and I use promises to confirm whether the action on the server was successful... if not then reflect that on the browser/client side. I don’t see how SkiTracks shouldn’t work the same way.

Other than that, great app overall. Been using for 5 seasons and love the updates over that time... just wish the watch communication with phone worked better.

by Wiets

Very happy with SkiTracks . I have been using it to track my skiing for 10 years! Also very happy that you added the Apple Watch functionality, it saves having to take out phone in the cold. My only suggestion would be to allow editing: shortening the elapsed time or deleting the last run. Its happened to me a few times that I left on ski tracks while driving home. It destroys the statistics. I’d rather delete the last run then delete the entire day.

by Krispenhartung

I have used SkiTracks a few times for classic Nordic skiing on my Apple Watch series 5. SkiTracks works great and has no issues using my Wahoo heart sensor chest strap in place of the Apple Watch heart rate sensor. My only requests are as follows: First, add an auto pause feature. So if I stop for any reason, the timer stops. Second, add the ability to add min and max heart rates and heart zones. Third, allow user customized screens. As it stands, without these features, I will likely switch to a Garmin fitness watch. SkiTracks has a lot of potential though, and for the price the premium version is unbeatable.

by Dexhiker

I have used SkiTracks for several years now for snowshoeing and hiking. I really like the simple display and variety of stats. The stats (with the exception of the maximum mph ) have compared favorably with other similar apps. Unfortunately, the last update to v4.6.1 broke the calculation of ascent and descent. I compared the same 4 mile hike before and after the update and the after footage was way off, much too high. Also compared a mountain hike where the trail ascent had been professionally determined. Similarly the ascent number was much too high. This has been reported to the coders.

by Megaman14

Love SkiTracks, very simple interface to use and check in on your skiing/snowboarding for the day. Speeds can be a little iffy but with gps and terrain, they do a great job with what they’ve got.

Only gripe is that when you forget to turn it off and drive away from the resort, there is no way to fix the mistake. I would recommend the ability to delete runs on an individual basis or a slider bar on runs to adjust the start/end times. OR figure out what Trace Snow did where it detects you are in the car and won’t record that data. Just the one thing missing to go from 4->5

by Norybrenrut

Best app Ever for keeping track ov ur day.
Keeps track ov Everything & DEAD on for location tracking which makes it Awesome for sking the trees. B cool if they added topo lines as an option 👍 maybe they do🤔 never looked I guess. So Happy just as is. Had SkiTracks for 3 years now & I can go back & see my 1st season w/Ski Tracks🎉🎉. Its fun to break out the phone on the chair and look at ur current day. People sitting next 2u are like - Whatttt😳😳
And go download SkiTracks 👍🎉
GREAT APP👍🎉🎉. Thanks Ski Tracks🙏🙏

by DS56128

So far so good. I've used SkiTracks for 10 ski days thus far, and its pretty cool. Nerdy, for sure. But its neat seeing your "stats" for the day. I've checked SkiTracks against my car speedometer, and other people's apps, and it seems super close (for the speedometer function). Setting my Iphone to low power mode makes the phone battery last a long time, despite the cold. Switching it to airplane mode helps even more. Overall, well worth the $0.99.

by Rpooch

Use SkiTracks every time I ski. Very accurate compare to an older garmin edge 305. I haven’t noticed any problems with battery life. The integration with watch has improved. I just noticed you can now start and pause your day from the watch without pulling out the phone. I keep the phone in my jacket pocket. iPhone 6 works with no issues. Plan on digging out my old iPhone 5 and see if I can plant it on my son since he at time skis off with his race mates will I ski with his younger brother. I upload data to garmin connect to view on any browser.

by M1westwood

I’ve been using this for 4-5 years and really like it. It is set and forget. You just turn it on, throw your phone in your pocket or backpack and off you go. Not sure how the iPhone gets such a good GOS signal when not out in the open, but it seems to work all the time. I haven’t done much with it other than check my stats at the end of the day and see what we did. It’s really cool to know how much vertical and how many miles you've traveled. There’s more to it than that; you can store photos. It seems to be pretty accurate as far as mph, distances, showing your exact route, etc. but hard to say because there’s now way for me to verify the data with another tool.

Request for developer: It would be really great to have a picture page in SkiTracks that shows all of the pictures from the runs and you simply my scroll down the page through the pics and click on a pic to review that track. This way, if you remember a great feature on a mountain you can snap a pic of it in SkiTracks and easily use ski tracks later on to help find the exact run that got you there. People would love this if done with a slick interface.

by Gadildafissh

I use it every time I go snowboarding without fail. There are so many useful features and data. I would like to suggest a couple features that I would love to see in the future: ability to edit my track in cases where I forget to stop it before driving, ability to set elevation changes that must be met before SkiTracks counts another run(for when I’m in the park and walk back to hit a feature multiple times). I would pay for these features and more.

by Pgh6687

Love it…many years strong!! However this year I noticed that the vertical skied main reference is the “total vertical” rather than “vertical skied” or “downhill vertical” as it’s been in the previous years. This skews the reported stats. Can this be changed back to report as the main “vertical” to be the “downhill vertical” through some setting? Or does it need to be on an app update? I’d think I’m not the only person that doesn’t like this. When a skier talks “vertical “ that they skied, it’s not usually including the uphill travel. Thank you!

by Dirtyharry5

I love SkiTracks! I have been using it for two years now and it’s so cool to track the amount of runs I have done, my elevation, distance and speed skied among other things.

One thing I forget to occasionally do is stop my track once I’m done skiing. So, I was hoping you guys could add a feature in the analysis tab of the past stats that could delete your run! This would make my daily, along with yearly stats, much more accurate.

I hope you take this into consideration! Thank you very much for an awesome app, happy powder hunting!

by BrucePSU

I’m work in the ski industry and have been using SkiTracks for over five years. In my opinion it’s still one of the best!

It does not use much battery power even when my days take me beyond 40,000 feet of vertical. This does everything you would expect and does it well. Was also pleasantly surprised to find that it tracked me thru the mountains of Europe while skiing from town to town. The Apple watch interface is awesome as well. I could go on about how it interacts with health and music apps but you can explorer those features for yourself… Enjoy.

by Kane KS

I have always wondered how fast I was going down the mountain. Now I know! It was also fun to “replay” my day. SkiTracks met my expectations of a GPS tracker.

Thank you for not having any in app purchases like your competitors. There is absolutely no justification to do that for an app like this.

If there was one thing I would like to see added, it would be the ability to edit a Track after saving it. While using it the first time, I forgot to pause SkiTracks when I got on a shuttle to go from one Ski area to another (Loveland Ski Area in Colorado has two areas that are accessible by shuttle) so SkiTracks recorded my ride in the shuttle. I could also see myself forgetting to stop recording only to remember on the drive home.

by Coe_driver

SkiTracks is great. You turn it on, put it in your pocket and enjoy your ride. I love the ability to trim my ride at the end of days when I leave SkiTracks recording. You get a few miles down the road and your data is off, it’s nice to be able to make your runs more accurate. I would like to see it work better with my Apple Watch. Other than that it’s straight forward, easy to use and view. Totally recommend if you want to track your runs.

by Rosedine

SkiTracks does do a few cool things, but the average speed includes time that you a stopped and not moving as well as time that you are on the chair lift. You can get you phone out and pause SkiTracks before and fire a run, but my fingers get cold, and I don’t like to do that.
It would also be nice if it would tell you how long each run takes, so you can compare to see if you’re getting faster. It’s a bit of a search for the run times and I think it includes the lifts again
Nice graphs of the elevation, and satellite view of the resort

by SkiingYooper

I love being able to look at my max. speed, distance, vertical, and path on the google earth map. It's worth purchasing the full app to get the extra features.
There could be a few improvements yet. I often have to re-name the ski resort. It does not work well on small hills (under 350 ft.). And it would be nice if the trim tool could be used to set start and end points for individual runs and lifts within your track.
Overall a very nice app, well worth the price!

by B.J.B.123

I think it’s the best app. Ran 3 apps today and started and stopped all within seconds of one another. Other than the time they all were surprisingly different. Vertical feet seemed to be the biggest culprit. I wonder which is most accurate? An online search yielded reviewers preferences but not an accuracy comparison. Anyway maybe SkiTrac could investigate. SkiTracks is always a top choice.

Developers - please integrate with Strava. That’s why I purchased an a secondary source in the first place.

by UncleSteveI

Used this on a recent 6-day ski trip to track our runs, speed, map - it does everything you want in ski tracking and nothing you don't. You can tell the developers really know what they are doing. The watch app is basic but useful and works well. No crashing or glitches on the phone or the watch, though it didn't work until upgrading to WatchOS 4.2.

After running the GPS and tracking all day, I was surprised to see only a fraction of the battery on my iPhone 8 was used. Very impressive.

Suggested improvements:
- Better maps that show ski runs (uses the Apple Maps built-in, which doesn't - Google maps does)
- Controls in the watch app to start/stop, etc. I don't want to drop my phone from a lift!
- Enable the snow sports workout type on other  Watch models than Series 3.

by Snarkwaffle

I’ve been using SkiTracks for about three seasons now, and it has always impressed me with its accuracy and features. Even now, in the off season, I can look back through each trip and remember all the great (or not so great) times I’ve had over the last couple of years. It struck me that it was probably time to review SkiTracks as I sat in the middle of the off season thinking about a skiing app. 11/10 would recommend.

by MichaelinPB

Not using Apple Watch so no comments about it.

SkiTracks rocks for all my ski needs. The map and edit functions are great for those occasions when I forget to turn it off after skiing. Just edit the end of the runs. Easy.

My want list:

Merge runs over multiple days on the same mountain to create a composite of all runs on a given mountain. This would be very helpful in finding runs that haven’t been explored.

Annotate where falls or rests appear.
This would be great to show where and how often we rest or fall.

Auto merge photos with ski route. Use the gps to link photos to places on the ski map to show where photos were taken during the course of a ski day. It would require accessing the photo album and pinpointing the location on the ski map or time of day.

by GLCMACL

Helpful to know where you haven’t skied as well as where you tend to ski. Has definitely saved us several times in whiteout conditions. One wish is that you could add days when you don’t remember to start it or add some vertical when you start it late. Very helpful when helping someone who hasn’t been to a resort before. Has everything and more than what I would think of.