No one likes to lose, so save your skis!!!!

S

sion216

New member
Ski Locator Questionnaire



I have often been in the situation where I, or one of the people I have been skiing with, have fallen in deep snow and found that our skis have taken a completely different path under the snow to the one that would be expected. This can lead to many hours, sometimes fruitlessly, searching for skis in deep snow, in cold conditions, getting angry and worried. This turns good days into bad ones, both for the person who has lost the ski and the friends who are skiing with them.



As you can gather then, I am looking to design a product that will aid the skier in the tracking of their skis if they have lost them in deep snow. This is to ensure that a day that should be spent skiing is not wasted in the search of skis, whilst in more severe cases, could also save the user the cost of a pair of skis.



Personal:

How old are you?



How many weeks skiing have you done?



Do you find that as you improve you head to the more challenging, off-piste terrain more regularly?



Losing Skis:

Have you, or a skier in your group, ever lost a ski under the snow for a period of time?



If so, how often does this happen to you? For instance, one skier in your party will have to spend more than ten minutes searching for their ski every seven days on the mountain.



What is the longest period of time that you have spent searching for a ski, yours or your friends?



Have you ever lost a ski permantently, either your own, a rental or a friends?





Tracking Device:



If you were to buy a device for tracking your skis would you like it to be a stand-alone tracking device, or to have other in-built features? Features may include feedback at the end of the day on distance travelled, top speed hit during the day etc



As a user would you rather have the device as operational through a current handheld device, such as your mobile phone, or rather through some other form of product? For instance stand-alone PDA, vibrating sensors in gloves, ski poles, etc



How much would you be willing to spend on a ski tracking device? Taking into account that this device could potentially save you the cost of either your skis, or the skis that you are having to pay for that you have hired or are testing.



Would it be important to you as a user that the appearance of the ski is not affected in anyway?



Would you mind having anything drilled into the top sheet of your skis? Performance would obviously not be affected



Rental/Test Skis:

If you work in a rental/test shop would you feel more secure giving out skis in the knowledge that the customer will have a constant ability to track them?



What percentage of your skis are lost a year on the mountain?





Thank you for taking the time out of your day to fill in this questionnaire. Your answers are highly important in aiding me to understand the needs of the user. With your input I hope that many more hours will be spent enjoying skiing on your skis in the deep snow, rather than worrying about where they are under the deep snow.

Sorry for such a long set of questions, but cheers for filling it out guys
 
dont they already make things so u dont loose skis? they are like a ribbon that attached to your ski and then wen the ski comes off the ribbon unravles and sticks out cause its flouresent
 
What I do is attach powder chords to the heel peice of my binding, usually using fluorescent marker tape, then i roll it up and attach it to my boot. When you crash the tape is pulled off and unrolls giving you a trail to where your ski may be. Simple solution and it costs around a dollar mabye for the peice of marker tape.
 
Thanks for your quick replies already guys. I was thinking about creating a product that would possibly do more than one function. For instance a tracking device, using similar technology to avalanche tracking, which can also correlate data at the end of the day to show your mountain movements, speeds, etc. I no that I myself would never use a set of powder cords, am far to lazy and also a little to vain, haha.
 
Power chords are cheap and easier to use than a tracking device. Also, the less crap on my skis, the better. As for the data, those exist as well and they are cheap and small (about the size of a cell phone). All in all I don't think anyone would buy it.
 
you could attach a recco tag and track it with a beacon....... but that would be rediculously expensive when a ribbon is perfect and costs less than your lunch!
 
I'm only answering these questions, becasue I am probably one of the few who has to deal with this every day.

Rental/Test Skis:

If you work in a

rental/test shop would you feel more secure giving out skis in the

knowledge that the customer will have a constant ability to track them?

Would I feel more secure? No. Because I don't know about teaching someone about how to use that feature, from a time consuming stand point. Plus the major issue here is cost. Skis are cheap. period. even super expensive pow boards, dont cost that much at the price we buy them at. adding ANY additional cost to rental or demo equipment is hard to budget for. Plus, we maintain it is the skiers responsibility to return the equipment the same as they received it from us. They lose it, they pay for it.

What percentage of your skis are lost a year on the mountain?

percentage? out of all rentals in a year, probably less then .1% about one every week or two. and about the same number of boards too some how.

 
this is kinda rediculous. go buy some caution tape, or that bright pink ribbon tape, or hey even some ribbon(Make sure it is sturdy though, so probably go with some bright colored ribbon because it is stronger than the caution tape). measure out two strips that are a yard, or maybe even a few yards depeding on how much you feel like dealing with. then tie a strip to each binding securely. take the excess yard to multiple yards and either roll it up and put it under/inside your pant gaiter/lightly tuck inside boots, or just stuff it all up under your gaiter or into the top of your boot. What do you know? know you've got a handy dandy ski locator for your powder skis. Unless you have submarine torpedoes for skis, a few feet to a few yards should be plenty enough to find your skis.

Not Guaranteed, but i had this problem last year, and ive heard of a product similar to this, so im testing it out this year and i am expecting it will work alright.
 
wow. delete my last post. i got tired of reading the thread itself that i just posted, and now i feel dumb because atleast 2 people have already said exactly waht i just did. sorry
 
i think the tracking device is a sweet idea. if you're in the backcountry skiing, you should have a transmitter anyway. if you could come up with a small device that would always be on "transmit" mode, and would be small, possibly running on a watch battery, you could stick that bitch between your bindings under your boot and you'd never know it was there. i've never used them, but powder chords and leashes seem to be extremely dangerous, effectively turning your skis into whirling blades of death in a tumbling, high-speed fall. and the ribbon stuff... i don't want to have wads of shit hanging off of me that probably won't do anything but make more litter. call me crazy, but idea sounds promising to me.
 
that's why you only use them when you are actually skiing powder, if you fall in the pow, the skis won't whirl around because the powder will catch them/prevent them from spinning
 
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