Ikon Pass

On the plus side, this app has all the key information skiers need, including which lifts are open and scheduled, trails open and closed, parking info, and even lift wait times, although that last info is oddly hard to find as it's only showed on the map in Trails mode, which is not the default. The map in the default Village mode is useless to me. Only key info that's missing is the 2-week weather outlook, which was very useful to plan my next ski trip. A very annoying feature is that it prompts for user ID and password every week, and there's no automatic completion, so you need to keep those handy. The old app was much better in that it prompted for those rarely. In short, it's a good app but a significant step down from the older Palisades app we had until last year, and all other skiers I've talked to have told me the same.

The app does a solid job at what it aims to do when you've got mobile data coverage, but it will do essentially nothing (other than continue to track your movement) if you don't have coverage. This means that if you're somewhere without coverage (many if not most places in a ski resort) and want to look at a map, you can't. You also can't start tracking (even without sharing your location with others) without coverage. Since I don't track myself the whole day (for phone battery reasons), the app is generally non-functional 80% of the time I want to use it due to not having cell coverage. Caching the list of resorts and maps for offline access would solve this problem. Additionally, allowing users to start tracking without coverage should be quite feasible. The app is 80% of the way there in terms of functionality but only 40% of the way there in terms of real-world usability. Realizing the remaining 60% is not hard though.

I love the app! There are a few things that can be worked on though. Adding a buddy to the tracking system so we can track each other didn’t seem to work for us. The last thing that would be helpful is the fact that a lot of mountains require us to make reservations, it would be nice if we could reserve days at certain mountains on the app instead of having to go to the website. Maybe both of these things can be completed with ease and we just messed it up. Anyways the app is amazing and so is the Ikon Pass! Worth every penny for a skier or boarder.