With the ski season well underway, it’s vital for any winter sports enthusiast to keep up to date with the latest accessories and apps designed to keep us healthy, safe and kitted-out on the slopes. These products are ideal for any skier, snowboarder or winter adventurer, either as a gift or an exciting pre-holiday purchase.
1. Panda Ski Goggles
These Panda Optics COBALT - White goggles combine a range of impressive features, including mirrored blue UV400+ polarised lens and integrated anti-fog technology, all rolled into a crisp, frameless design. Users can expect a wide visual display with a comfortable fit and good helmet compatibility, as well as a low-light HD lens which ensures visibility even in dark and whiteout conditions.
2. Slopes
Emily Pocock, an experienced ski instructor at Maison Sport, has named the Slopes app as one of her ski essentials. It's designed to ‘track your distance, speed, vertical distance, average speeds et cetera.’
‘Slopes fully integrates with other activity trackers like Apple Watch and even has information about conditions and trail maps for a number of resorts.’
Very handily, the app also offers a social trail map which tracks your friends and helps arrange an easy meet-up location. If you're looking for a tool to track individual progress or (perhaps more crucially) claiming those all-important bragging rights, Slopes does the job perfectly.
3. FATMAP
The FATMAP app is carefully designed to help you navigate your way around any ski resort by tracking your current location and presenting a 3D map of your surroundings. The app is driven by a desire to make adventures more accessible to experience and share, creating a ‘definitive guidebook of the great outdoors’.
Emily Pocock, ski instructor at Maison Sport, names this as another one of her complete essentials: ‘This is an app I often use to help plan a ski touring trip or to familiarise myself with a new area or route.’
4. White Risk
Another innovative application, White Risk offers meticulous up-to-date avalanche information to help skiers understand the conditions and hazards in their area. Another favourite of Maison Sport, it’s a great app to use while planning a trip, while out on the slopes, or as an educational tool before you venture to the mountains to help you better understand the environmental risks.
5. Pocketalk S
Pocketalk S is the perfect companion in any holiday or travel context. At the touch of a button, the pocket-sized device can translate 82 languages bi-directionally in real time. It also features a text-to-translate camera which instantly recognises and translates text, the written word and signs — perfect for helping to read menus or finding your way around a resort.
Pocketalk prides itself on using consistently accurate translations and, quite impressively, is programmed to even pick up localised dialects and slang. With a complementary 2-year mobile data plan that provides coverage in over 130 countries/regions, you won’t ever need to rely on wifi.
6. Les 3 Vallées app
The Les Trois Vallées app allows users to discover and explore the world's largest ski area of Les Trois Vallées, traversing Courchevel, Méribel, Brides-les-Bains, Les Menuires, Saint-Martin-de-Belleville, Val Thorens and Orelle.
The app offers an interactive piste map, including live ski lift information, piste grooming, restaurants, webcams, and an accurate 3-day weather forecasts. Users can even place geo-location pins to arrange meets with family and friends.
For added safety on the slopes, the app allows users to see their precise location and contact the closest rescue team with a quick SOS button.
7. Menthoderm
Skiing forces your skin to endure a great deal, with drastic altitudes, winds, and extreme temperatures that deplete skin's natural moistures. Menthoderm is a professionally-accredited skincare product perfect for anyone suffering from dry or weather-beaten skin after days out on the slopes.
Recommended by nurses, dermatologists, and doctors, its menthol-rich formula works to soothe, cool and hydrate upset skin, and is made free from sodium lauryl sulphate.
8. The Rescuer by KAEĀ
The Rescuer is natural, carbon negative skincare made from soothing botanical concentrates and biodiversity-positive Mānuka honey. It calms irritations, protects against bacteria, and rescues rough or irritated skin, as well as cleansing, purifying and hydrating it. The KAEĀ brand is inspired by New Zealand’s unique landscape, marrying botanical skincare with a commitment to conservation and biodiversity protection.
Whether you're heading to a ski resort in the Alps, Canada, Japan or anywhere in between, these ski accessories, apps and gadgets will help ensure you can plan and enjoy your trip stress-free.