It's a problem many of us have faced in one of the world's giant ski areas, when we are many valleys away from our hotel and apartment and the sun is starting to go down, at what point do we need to start heading back in order to make all the successive lift connections we need to make in order to be at the bottom of the last lift we need to take to get home before it closes for the day. If we haven't been victims ourselves there are always tales of horrific taxi fares required for rescue from a remote valley from those who got their calculations wrong.
Now the giant Portes d Soleil ski area that straddles the French swiss border linking the slopes above a dozen resorts in to a 650km network believes it has the answer with the latest version of its app.
The app upgrade adds a GPS function which calculates when you need to start heading back by keeping track of your movements around the ski area once you have set your base location that you need to get back to. The app is supposed to work in real time so that if pistes or lifts are closed it takes this in to account in its calculations. It is not clear if it takes queue time at lifts in to account too.
The existing Portes du Soleil app already features speed measuring, weather predicting and augmented reality mapping functions.