Final 12 months, POWDER ran an April Idiot’s story a few pretend tech firm attempting to rework snowboarding right into a metaverse sport. It was a silly, thinly veiled plea to get off your cellphone and spend extra time outdoors, ideally snowboarding. However typically, know-how leads to an addition to snowboarding that’s truly actually neat, like Sundance Mountain’s new interactive 3D path map.Now, 3D path maps aren’t new. Lake Louise, Alberta, has one. The map Sundance created, although, with some assist from Legend Guides, is on a special stage. Customers can pan across the resort, gaze on the surrounding mountains, and scope trails earlier than they trip them in actual life.Try a video demonstration of the brand new 3D path map in motion under. Preserve studying for extra.The 2026 POWDER Photograph Annual is right here! Search for a print copy on a newsstand close to you, or click on right here to have a replica shipped on to your entrance door.
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Based mostly on my testing, the element of the map varies from location to location. Usually, the bushes and buildings are a bit blobby. However in the event you zoom into one of some bubbles on the map, all the things comes into sharper, beautiful focus. I spent just a little hanging out on the high of Sundance’s Flathead carry, marveling on the view.The map is certainly one of a number of created by Legend Guides and is joined by Snowbird and Powder Mountain, Utah. The product’s web site additionally contains 3D map demos of a golf course and Pine Meadows Ranch, an property. They’re equally enjoyable to poke round in—one phrase of warning, although, your cellphone or pc may wrestle to load them. Mine did, no less than.
Painted path maps, after all, are a fiercely lionized little bit of ski tradition. The work of James Niehues and his protege, Rad Smith, conjures fond reminiscences and, in contrast to a digital map, exists in bodily area. Fishing a barely soggy path map out of your pocket on the mountain is a practice that, hopefully, isn’t going wherever.However for truly experiencing a mountain earlier than a go to, a Legend Guides recreation appears to be bar none. The maps even embrace the choice to fly over the trail of a ski path. If that will get extra individuals enthusiastic about leaving the sofa and spending a day within the mountains, we’re in.
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