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Vail's EpicMix App Lets Skiers Catalog and Claim Mountain Conquests

by Warren Riddle on September 1, 2010 at 09:20 AM

Vail EpicMix
Vail, Colorado's reputation as a premiere global ski destination has been earned from almost 50 trailblazing years of excellent service, sprawling terrain and unrivaled entertainment for families and casual riders. Vail and Summit County now hope to further the evolution of U.S. mountain sports with a new app that intertwines up-to-the-minute snow and trail reports, various aspects of social networking services like Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare, and the award systems of the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live.

This upcoming season (premiering November 5th at Keystone Resort), the PEAKS lift ticket along with Vail's Epic, Summit, Heavenly and Colorado season passes will come equipped with wireless Radio-Frequency (RF) transmitters. The RF chips already enable instant lift access (without having to cumbersomely handle paper tickets), and will now allow skiers and boarders to comprehensively "capture, connect and share" their mountain conquests.

The app tracks movements, determines your total vertical feet skied and catalogs every lift ride and ski day. Riders can earn "pins," as well, by accomplishing tasks like covering 350,000 vertical feet, hitting specific areas and repeatedly riding certain lifts at various times. By connecting the app to Facebook and Twitter, participants can instantly share accomplishments with the world. The networking link also allow skiers and riders to find friends who are on the mountain, and then -- through an instant messaging system -- arrange meeting times and locations. EpicMix also grant kids (under 13) access to their own specific social networking club that is protected by strict privacy settings.

The app certainly provides revolutionary features, but it could also alienate two established mountain cliques: The truant college students, a.k.a. sicky-gnar jibbers -- who log 100 days while their parents think they're in class -- will want to update their privacy settings. And, the old-school hot-doggers -- with ancient Bolles, stonewashed jeans tucked into ski boots and DayGlo parkas adorned with a menagerie of faded lift tickets -- won't be able to holler out those traditional apres-ski fibs about hucking themselves off cliffs while pulling rad mule kick backscratchers.

Tags: apps, epicmix, RFID, RFID tags, skiing, sport, summit county, SummitCounty, top, vail, Vail Resorts, VailColorado, VailResorts

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