Best tracking apps

[jo3st3]

What tracking apps do you like the best?

 

[surfsnowgirl]

Ski tracks

 

[PhillyGuy]

I use Ski Tracks for stats but also use Maprika for mapping trails. It’s a free app that saves your GPS tracking on a trail map. You can also share location with friends.

 

[aliebe]

Just used the free version of Snocru yesterday. Only my first time with the app, but it seemed fairly accurate.

 

[Tlri]

Trace works well, formerly alpine replay. They offer the usual app that uses your phone or sell a small puck like gps that you can mount on your skis or whatever you ride.
I bought one for my surfboard and use on my skis as well. Gives a lot of data and saves phone battery.

 

[WheatKing]

I use trace as well.. Works well on my old android phone (Galaxy S4) but i tried it on my new iphone 7 plus and it sucked...almost like the gps tracking wasn't working in the iphone.. ??!? maybe a permissions thing?? dunno.. it was horribly inaccurate.

I've always been interested in the puck.. hows that work in the really cold days?

 

[Jilly]

I used Trace Snow last year in Whistler. Haven't used anything yet this year. I have a Samsumg 5S.

 

[Tlri]

The trace puck works great. The battery can be an issue on the cold days but to me that’s better than draining my phone battery.
Typical day in the teens or twenties it lasts for eight hours. I bring it inside to warm up when I go in for lunch and that seems to help the battery life.
It gives a little more info than the phone app and seems to be pretty accurate as far as speed.
Definitely not something you have to have but it’s a fun toy. Like I said I use it for skiing, surfing, and SUP, for water sports it gives info the phone can’t.

 

[Bill Miles]

I recently acquired my first ever Smartphone and have tried both Ski Tracks and Alpine Replay (Trace App).

Both seem mostly accurate in tracking position and mappling. Both are somewhat erratic in number of runs (showing an altitude increase in the middle of a run thereby counting it as two or more runs), vertical (showing hundreds of feet for a ten or twenty foot drop going from the top of one lift to the bottom of the next), and speed. I suspect it is more the GPS reception/accuracy of my phone rather than the app, but it is difficult to tell.

 

[Jersey Skier]

I've use Ski Tracks and tried some others. I've run several at the same time. All had similar numbers except for speed. For some reason Ski Tracks consistently has my max speed about 10mph higher on each run but distance, vertical feet, etc were almost identical.

 

[jo3st3]

I've used Trace Snow and Slopes on iOS. I like both. There's something about the Slopes app that just feels simpler, and it's always been pretty accurate. It also works with an apple watch, if you have one.

 

[skidrew]

Primarily been using Trace, but have tried Ski Tracks and Slopes (although with Slopes I haven't paid so can't unlock all features).

To me the biggest advantage of trace is you can also view runs etc on web, not just on your phone, making it easier to see things.

Skitracks is nice if all you want is pure data - it provides it all right there on a single page. Ski Tracks is definitely the most refined (I think Trace sort of gave up development of their app and have focused on hardware).

 

[dbostedo]

I've only used Ski Tracks and really like it. It has been accurate on my phone when tested by driving it around in a car. But it can definitely still do weird things, or be inaccurate over short distances, and is dependent on how good your GPS reception is.

I use Ski Tracks for stats but also use Maprika for mapping trails. It’s a free app that saves your GPS tracking on a trail map.

Note that Ski Tracks already shows you a map of where you've been with a "trail map" - i.e. the trails marked on a map. The map can show a satellite image, or regular topo map, or trail map. You can see it by selecting the globe icon in the bottom of the days stats page, or select "Map" while tracking I think.

Here's one of mine :

 

[Guy in Shorts]

Ski Tracks - For less than $1 you can get the best app.

 

[PhillyGuy]

Ski Tracks is great. But it’s nice to see the tracking over a trail map.

 

[jo3st3]

That's a nice looking picture of a ski place to overlay your runs. Most apps use the google maps and it's often not as nice looking as that. What app uses trail maps?

 

[David]

I've tried 5 or 6 and keep coming back to Trace. I use about 50% of my phone battery life on a full day. I use a hand warmer next to phone on really cold days.

I've never heard of the puck before but it sounds really good but how does it stay on your ski? Can you put it in a pocket or does it have to be outside? Where do you buy them?

 

[jo3st3]

I've tried 5 or 6 and keep coming back to Trace. I use about 50% of my phone battery life on a full day. I use a hand warmer next to phone on really cold days.

I've never heard of the puck before but it sounds really good but how does it stay on your ski? Can you put it in a pocket or does it have to be outside? Where do you buy them?

http://www.traceup.com/trace-for-snow

 

[skidrew]

http://www.traceup.com/trace-for-snow

3m adhesive on a mount, which Trace locks into

http://www.traceup.com/faq

A bit disconcerting that it provides only 4 hours battery life at 10F . . . that's barely through lunch.

 

[jo3st3]

I did a head to head comparison of the most popular apps to see how they stacked up for 9 runs tonight.

Slopes, Trace Snow, Ski Tracks, and Maprika were all running. I attached screens from the results.

Trace Snow has some cool online features with the website, as well as being able to join local groups, and the leaderboards are interesting as well. I think it's the one thing that sets it apart. It's pretty solid in terms of accuracy, and tracks similar stats to the other apps. The one thing that might be of interest to park folks, it tracks jumps, which I believe is unique to this app. The puck is interesting, but as a skier I don't want to attach it to my skis and the app does a good enough job without it imo for free.

Slopes is straight forward and simple to use app, and has similar stats to Trace Snow. I like that you can trim your session for those time your drive off and forget to turn it off. They are adding the photo tracking, similar to Ski Tracks. Good social media interaction, and the posts look good on FaceBook. It's great on the iPhone, interacting with the native heath tracking, and works with the Apple Watch (which I don't have). The non-subscription version provides lots of features, and I don't see any major reason to upgrade and pay for it... unless you like the 3D interactive maps and speed heat maps and other cool map features. Those features do set it apart from the other apps if you're willing to pay.

Ski Tracks is for the data obsessed for sure. Tracks all kinds of stats, some of which aren't really needed, but it's still cool to know. Sometimes those deep stats aren't totally accurate though (for example, it said I was on a 43 degree slope and it's probably more like 25). I like the photos on the tracked runs. UX could use a little polish, and it would be nice if it changed the color of lifts versus runs on the map, but if all you care about are the numbers, this is numbers city. The Ski Tracks Lite app, which is what I used for this test, allows up to 5 runs tracked, otherwise you have to buy it.

Maprika doesn't track stats, but it does a nice job of using the map of the resort to overlay. There were some minor accuracy issues but that's a signal issue that all the apps had. It would be cool to see some of these other apps use the resort maps also, as it's much nicer looking than a Google ariel view (which is often a photo that isn't even during the winter).

I've tried SnoCru in the past, and didn't include it in this test. It's a nice option if you have a lot of friends on the mountain at the same time as you, otherwise I think the other options might be better.

Summary
All in all, they are all pretty good. Each have pros and cons.

All of the apps (minus Maprika) measured speeds within 1mph and were all fairly good in that way.

They all had some issues with reporting the position I was in to a degree on particular runs. Most of that is likely related to the strength of the GPS signal, but none the less, I think the apps should do a better job of snapping your position to the known trails (as an option if nothing else).

I think it comes down to whether you value the numbers (Ski Tracks), the social media interaction (Slopes), the leaderboards and website option (Trace Snow), pretty looking maps to capture the day (Maprika), or an ability to find your friends for the day (SnoCru). I would imagine for some folks, it's an easy choice because they value certain things higher than others. Personally, there are things I like about all of them and wish I could combine them all into one super app.