I’m Breaking Up With The Palisades Tahoe App

It’s been a good run. I’ve been an avid user of the Palisades Tahoe app on my iPhone since sometime in 2017. Most of those years, it’s been a somewhat useful source of mountain information, lift operations and gave me a simple way to collect data about my ski habits. I know, there’s a show stopper right there, as a lot of people I know don’t want the Borg to have all of that data about how they spend their time on the mountain. Yet, I like having access to that information for myself and I stopped worrying about some analyst in Denver knowing that I ski a ridiculous amount of laps in unofficial places like Chute Zero.

You have to remember, before I became a ski bum and ski blogger, I spent a lot of years teaching science and math to the tweens and teens of Northern California. Collecting, organizing and interpreting data using technology has always been a big part of that instruction. Here’s some facts I have learned about myself over the past 8 seasons:

• In just about every season, I can get my “per ride” lift cost down to about 50¢ each
• Over the last 8 years, I am riding the Summit Lift less each year and seeking out quieter zones on the mountain
• I’ve had a perfect season at Alpine Meadows, missing no days when the mountain is open, twice.
• I was a “teacher pleaser” back in elementary school, thriving on meaningless gold stars. The “achievements” trophies in the app work the same way for me, Within reason, I will make them happen, even though it doesn’t matter.

Then there is the “Leaderboard”, which lets you compare days skied, vertical feet skied and number of lifts ridden with other avid skiers and riders that use the Palisade Tahoe app for tracking their days. I know people that are pretty competitive about that stuff. Myself, I like to be near the top of the leaderboard for the number of days skied. As a ski blogger, I feel like it lends a bit of credibility to my efforts. Otherwise I would be a relative newcomer to the mountain with not much experience working in the industry. That said, it is kind of fun to stand in a lift line and hear someone say “I need to catch up to that Mark F guy!”

Three seasons ago, the “Legendary Rewards” program was implemented. By allowing the Palisades Tahoe app to collect your data, you could qualify for several levels of awards. Most of these were entirely useless. I only claimed the meaningful $5 Coors Light and the free poke bowls for two. Most of the other rewards were simple discounts or entries into raffles that I am not sure ever really existed. The data that Palisades Tahoe collects from tracking in the app is the basis for wait times for lifts displayed in the app. Pass scans can’t be used for that since the majority of lifts across the two mountains don’t have an RFID gate.

So Why The Breakup?

Like all relationships, it’s complicated. The Palisades Tahoe app is built on the SkiLynx platform. The developers supply apps for some of the biggest players in the US ski industry: Jackson Hole, Aspen, Killington, Snowbird and others. It’s not a bad app in itself. I met the developers a couple of years ago and they are very nice people. The problems I see with the app have more to do with whoever is currently at the controls behind the scenes on a day to day basis.

Tracking Where We Have Been

The current version of the app uses a technology called “geofencing” to determine where you have been. So rather than outputting an accurate map of where you have been each day, week or season – it instead can just say “we think he has skied through these “boxes” that represent particular runs. That leads to some wildly inaccurate stats. Here’s some examples:

• Peters Peril: 213 times (actual number is 1) The rest of the time I am on the Wolverine runout.
• Hot Wheels Gully: 126 times (actual number is around 5) I do frequent a nearby run, probably more than 126 times
• Lower Forty Face: 37 times (actual number is 0) as I really prefer Gentian Gully

The same geofencing technology is used to determine how long you are standing in a particular lift line. That said there is some algorithm that modifies the output so you never see a 35 minute lift line listed. My general rule is if it says anything other than “0-2 minute wait”, you should double it.

Back in the day, geofence technology was important. It allows for a reasonably accurate estimate of your location, without having your devices GPS continually updating data, saving battery life. But as technology has improved, continuous tracking has become the standard. If you have used Google maps for directions in your car or an app like Strava for tracking your workouts, you know how much more accurate tracking has become, providing you are willing to let “the man” have your data.

The Legendary Rewards Aren’t So Legendary

I’m really not sure how well the Legendary Rewards program worked at motivating people to track their skiing and riding in the PT app. Most of my friends find that the rewards offered were not all that inspirational, with the exception of a free poke bowl or a cheesy “100 Days” tee shirt. And then there is this season, where it appears that they just gave up. We are 100% of the way through the Alpine Meadows Season and about 90% of the way through the Palisades season and here’s what the Legendary Rewards page on the website says:

It’s been like that since last October or November. I would guess that some bean counter somewhere asked “Why are we doing this?” Us people on the leaderboards are probably going to show up, reward or not. We are also not in the target demographic that allows for maximum wallet capture. I am guessing that the marketing budget is instead being funneled into budget categories that result in more Ikon tourism.

Wouldn’t it be cool if using tracking actually resulted in something people want. Would you track your skiing on a daily basis knowing you could earn a cool old school Alpine Meadows hoodie with a correct logo by the end of the season. Yes, you would.

The Accuracy Of The App Has Deteriorated

Talk to anyone that has spent a lot of time at our favorite mountain over the last couple of season and they will agree. You can’t trust the lift status information in the app anymore. This season it seems like it was wrong as often as it was right. Lifts that showed open were actually closed and vice versa. Expected operations posted in the app on storm days were often wildy inaccurate, as an example showing that the whole upper mountain at Palisades would be open when the ridge winds were over 100mph. Corrections sometimes came far too late, causing bewildered newbies to make a two hour drive to find most lifts on hold. This is not an app specific issue, that is an operator input issue.

Back in the day, all of this information was kept up to date by someone at Alpine Meadows, someone that knew the mountain and the people that have the correct information. Overtime, more of these jobs have been consolidated, with fewer people covering both sides of the mountain. Word is there’s more pressure to consolidate even more of these things into the central office in Denver. I don’t think we are there yet, but grading the information presented in the app, it used to always be and “A” and I would now give it a “C-“.

Making matters even more frustrating, the app will bamboozle you. By pulling down on your screen, the app will seemingly “refresh the data”. This makes people think that they have the “latest information”. While your screen might say “Updated Sunday, May 11 at 10:56am”, that just means you refreshed your end. Whomever is pushing the buttons behind the scene may not have updated that information for hours.

Most of the time, as the lifts roll in the morning, things are generally accurate. Things get wonky as soon as anything unusual happens: wind holds, patrol holds or that rotating Sherwood and Scott schedule at the end of the season. Once in a great while, that lack of updates works out in your favor, as when Lakeview is actually open on a powder day but still shows closed in the app.

It’s a complex system. There’s a lot of lifts between the two mountains and all sorts of things that affect operations. Maybe it’s time to just go back to some simple status boards, like the one below that used to be at the base area of Alpine Meadows:

That one was sure a beauty. It would probably be easier to create something like that in the year 2025, then place one at the base, another at the Chalet and another at the top of Sherwood. Never again would I have to take my phone out of my pocket and pull up my goggles to look at the app on a storm day.

Also…Notifications Are Broken

There was a time and place where notifications were actually reliable and useful. You could get them via Twitter or through the app itself. This was a great step forward, as notifications can popup on your Apple Watch, and most of the time I could get Siri to read the notifications.

As Twitter became Xitter, I have been trying to rid my life of that app. Notifications from the PT app have been wholly unreliable this season. It seems like the only ones I ever get are the ones suggesting you try to fall feet first in deep snow. I turn notifications on, and days later they are turned off again. It’s maddening. Then there’s the issue of selecting notifications only for the Alpine Meadows side of things, which is not possible. You still have to hear that Bailey’s Beach is on wind hold again, even though you have not ridden that lift in 20 years.

Yup just give us some accurate signage around the mountain that tell us what’s happening at Alpine Meadows. I had a good giggle when I skied at Donner Ski Ranch last Saturday. At the bottom of Lift 1 was a small board listing the 6 lifts, with a plastic tag hanging on hooks that could be flipped from “Closed” to “Open”. It works.

So What Is Next?

When I am not skiing at Alpine Meadows or Palisades Tahoe, I use the Slopes app for tracking my skiing. I’ve also used that app since 2017 and during that time the developer has really added a lot of useful features. Not only is it a good tracking app, there’s more accurate crowd sourced information about current conditions. There’s pretty good maps in the free version and excellent maps in the premium paid version, which I think is worth it.

The tracking is much more granular, giving great detail on not just runs I skied, but how I skied them in terms of speed, stops, turns. You can replay that at the end of the day. You can export that data to see it as a map in Apple workouts, or export that data to apps like Strava. I have it automagically export to an app called HealthFit, where I can create cool heat maps of where I am skiing the most.

Plus Slopes works at just about every ski area in the US, so I can put all of my ski stuff together in one place. It appears that a feature has been added to the premium maps on Slopes that indicates open and closed lifts, but I have not tested that yet. That said, I can just add a home screen button to my phone that links directly to the mobile friendly lift status page at the Palisades Tahoe website.

Legendary rewards? I’m pretty good at making my own poke bowls, and making my own t-shirts and other schwag. I will survive. We do this because skiing is fun, right?

I did ski the last three days, twice at the northern annex and once at DSR. The corn conditions had recovered to the point where skiing was really great again and I managed to avoid the Saturday crowds. Also, if you have not had a slice of Janet’s pie at DSR, it’s worth the trip. I now stand at 170 days for the season and I am probably not done yet. It’s snowing today which will mess with the corn cycle again. I have a lot of family obligations anyways this week….

I have no affiliation with the Slopes app or its developer. I just think it’s a good product.