The season is officially upon us here in Colorado, as multiple hills are open, including most of Vail Resorts.  If you happened to pickup one of the several varieties of season passes available to you via Vail Resorts, you may have heard about, or have seen Epic Mix.  With the explosion of social media, it was only time before somebody put this idea into production.   As someone who works with technology daily, I was excited to check out Epic Mix this season.

Essentially Epic Mix is Vail Resorts version of a Foursquare hybrid, that includes trail maps, and weather among other features.  Users who purchase a season pass, are given the option to sign up for Epic Mix over at http://www.epicmix.com/    Once signed up, you have access to stats and more, relating to your visits to each of Vail Resort’s Mountains.  Using the RFID technology in your season pass, Vail Resorts can tell you all kinds of information about your day on the mountain. I’ve only been hanging at Keystone pre-season, but here are a few of the things I’ve been looking at with Epic Mix.   I’ve included a screenshot of the panel I can see when I login to the site via a web browser.  There’s also a mobile app for Android and iPhone users, which allows you to keep up with what’s going on.

Epic Mix

You can see from the screenshot above, I can add friends, and keep tabs on what they are doing, where they’re riding, etc, as well as myself.  It’s interesting, because it’s really a great way to get people to the mountain, as you get achievements via badges, much like Foursquare when you hit certain marks.    The biggest and coolest feature I like is the photo portion.  There are photographers at various spots through-out the mountains, (mainly lift and base areas) that will shoot photos of you and your friends, which are completely free and added to your Epic Mix account automatically.  If you want the high-res version of those photos, you do have to pay (of course) but the normal sharing version is absolutely free.  Such a great idea, for families or people who don’t really bring a camera with them, but wanted to get a photo of the group.   The catch of course is that someone in the photo has to have a season pass. It’s a great idea  by the teams over at Vail Resorts and honestly it’s done really well.  I’ve found that I enjoy using the mobile application when I’m on the mountain, to see where I’m at with the number of runs, or which runs I’ve taken etc.  Also it’s cool to see where your friends are riding too.   Check out some of the features of the mobile app shown below.

Main App Screen

The main screen of the app shows you the various widgets you can play with to pull up a wealth of information about your season, or the mountain/location you want to visit, or are currently at.

Trail Maps

The ability to pull up a quick electronic copy of the trail map of the mountain your at is insanely damn cool.  I’ve used this a few times to figure out runs this year already.  You can use the iPhone gestures to toggle the map around to find what you’re looking for.

Mountain Conditions

Another fun feature is the ability to pull up the conditions of not only the mountain your at, but also Vail’s other resorts such as Breckenridge, or Vail itself.   You can also see the menu along the bottom allows you to get more information about a given resort.  If you want to see the webcams or the lift information that’s included too, and shown below.

Live Webcam Feeds

Live webcam feeds (although I took this at night, so hence the darkness.)  Very cool feature to see what’s going on at Breckenridge when you’re over at Keystone, or vice versa.

Lift Information

Ever wanted to know how long a lift ride is, or what the status of a given lift is, it’s now at your fingertips.  Just select the “Lifts” menu item, and you can pull up information about every lift of the mountain resort you’re at, or selected.

Photos!

This is one of my favorite features hands down.  The photos the photographers snap on the mountain, automatically get sent to your Epic Mix, and shown in the gallery on the mobile app, website, or your Facebook, or Twitter account.   A great way to enjoy the day, and not worry about trashing your camera on the mountain!

There are more features wrapped up within the application, and website.  I do have to say that the one thing I find a bit obnoxious about Epic Mix, is the ability to add friends is confusing, and not well laid out.  It’s hard to figure out exactly how to add people as friends without using Facebook as a feed into your friends list.  Overall, I really like Epic Mix.  It’s executed really nicely, and adds a bit of social media to the whole winter sports experience without having to use Facebook or Twitter to update statuses.   It will be interested to see how this grows and progresses, but for now, it’s definitely a very cool offering, especially for free to season pass holders.