What "tracking your skiing" actually means

When someone says they "track their skiing," they usually mean one of two different things, and it is worth being clear about which one you are after before choosing an app or device.

The first meaning is activity recording: keeping a log of how far you skied or snowboarded, how much vertical you descended, how many runs you completed, and how fast you were going. This is straightforward GPS logging — you start the app or watch at the bottom of the first lift and stop it at the end of the day. The result is a track file (usually GPX) and a stats summary. This is what most skiers and snowboarders mean by "ski tracking."

The second meaning is navigation with live position display: seeing your dot on a piste map in real time during the day, getting turn-by-turn guidance, and knowing where you are on an unfamiliar mountain. This is what Glidr's core navigation feature provides — and it produces the same track data as a pure activity recorder, because GPS position is being sampled throughout.

The two are not mutually exclusive. You can navigate and record simultaneously. But understanding the difference helps you choose what you actually need. If you are a regular visitor to a resort you know well, you may only want the activity recording. If you are exploring a new area for the first time, navigation plus recording is more useful. This guide focuses on the recording and stats side, which is what most people search for when they ask how to track their skiing.

The stats worth tracking — and what they tell you

A ski tracking app typically records several distinct numbers. They are not all equally useful, and some are more misunderstood than others.

Vertical descent

Vertical descent — sometimes called "vert" — is the cumulative altitude you have dropped across all your runs in a day. If you take a lift to 2,800 m, ski to 1,900 m, ride the lift again, and repeat ten times, your vertical for the day is 10 × 900 m = 9,000 m of vertical descent.

Vertical is the single most useful ski day stat because it is a meaningful proxy for how much actual skiing you did. A day with high vertical means long runs, many runs, or both — as opposed to a day where you rode lifts most of the time. It allows meaningful comparison across different resorts (a day at a resort with 1,000 m vertical runs produces more vert per lift ride than a resort with 300 m runs) and across different days at the same resort.

Vertical also correlates reasonably well with physical effort — particularly for snowboarders, where each 100 m of descent involves active edge control and muscle engagement. Most intermediate skiers and snowboarders complete between 6,000 and 15,000 m of vertical on a full active day, though this varies widely with lift speed, queue length, and run length.

Distance

Total distance recorded by a ski tracker is the path length of your actual track — not straight-line distance from top to bottom, but the actual route you followed including all turns and traverses. A single 3-kilometer red run skied with wide side-to-side turns will appear as 4 to 5 km in a tracker, because the lateral distance of each turn adds to the total.

This is correct and expected behavior. It means that comparing "km skied" numbers between riders is only meaningful if they ski in roughly the same style — a rider who takes short tight turns will accumulate more distance than a rider who makes long-radius carving turns down the same run.

Distance is still useful as a personal comparison — your own days and your own style are consistent enough that daily distance tells you how active you were relative to previous days. For resort comparison, vertical is cleaner.

Run count

Run count is exactly what it sounds like: how many individual descents you completed. Tracking apps detect run boundaries by identifying when you are ascending on a lift (based on upward movement, low speed, or a combination) versus actively descending.

Run count is the most misleading of the core stats in isolation. A day with 30 short runs at a resort with quick, shallow lifts and gentle beginner slopes may represent less total skiing than a day with 12 long runs at a resort with slow, long chairlifts and 600-meter vertical descents. Run count is meaningful in context — knowing your typical run count at a particular resort on a typical day is useful for comparing against other days at the same resort. Cross-resort comparisons require pairing run count with vertical and average run length.

Speed

Many ski trackers record maximum speed and average moving speed. These figures are of genuine interest but also the most variable and error-prone of the common stats.

GPS speed measurements are based on the Doppler shift of the satellite signal, which is actually more accurate than GPS position for instantaneous speed — modern receiver chips can measure speed to within about 0.1 m/s under good conditions. However, a single GPS fix glitch — a momentary loss of satellite lock followed by re-acquisition — can produce a spurious position jump that the receiver interprets as a brief period of very high speed, giving an inflated maximum speed figure. This is why some trackers show an implausibly high top speed on days where you were not skiing particularly fast. Maximum speed numbers should be viewed skeptically unless the tracking app applies some form of outlier filtering.

Average speed is more reliable and more practically useful. It gives you a sense of how actively you were skiing versus standing at lift queues or resting on a terrace.

How GPS ski tracking works — and why phones drain

GPS tracking on a ski mountain works identically to GPS tracking anywhere else — a receiver in your phone or watch measures the time delay of signals arriving from multiple satellites overhead, uses the known speed of light and the satellites' known positions to triangulate its own location, and records that position at regular intervals. The resulting sequence of positions, timestamped, forms a GPS track.

Altitude accuracy and the GPS vs barometer question

Ski tracking accuracy for horizontal position (where you are on the map) is typically good on a ski slope — 3 to 8 meters of error under open sky at a standard 1 Hz (one fix per second) update rate. The problem for skiing is vertical accuracy.

GPS altitude is derived from satellite geometry. Because satellites orbit roughly 20,000 km above the Earth in a near-horizontal arc as seen from any fixed point on the surface, the geometry for vertical position is always weaker than for horizontal position. The practical result is that GPS altitude typically has an error of 10 to 20 meters under good open-sky conditions, and can be worse in the mountains where steep terrain or ridgelines block some satellite angles. Over a full day of ski runs, these altitude errors accumulate and can make your total vertical figure incorrect by hundreds of meters.

A barometric altimeter takes a different approach. Atmospheric pressure decreases predictably with altitude — roughly 1 hPa per 8 meters near sea level. A device with a barometric sensor measures pressure and converts it to altitude. Under stable conditions, this gives vertical accuracy of 1 to 5 meters, significantly better than GPS altitude. The weakness is that atmospheric pressure also changes with weather. A storm front arriving during your ski day can shift pressure enough to make the altimeter read a false altitude change of 30 to 50 meters. Quality smartwatches that include both GPS and a barometric altimeter handle this by using GPS altitude periodically to recalibrate the barometer, combining the strengths of both sensors.

The practical implication: if you have a smartwatch with a barometric altimeter, use it for vertical tracking. It will produce more accurate vertical numbers than a phone-only GPS track.

Tree cover, lifts, and GPS accuracy

Two specific situations on a ski mountain consistently degrade GPS accuracy. The first is tree-covered terrain — forested ski runs or tree-lined narrow pistes where the tree canopy blocks satellite signals above a certain elevation angle. In dense trees, a phone GPS receiver may lose accurate lock entirely and begin dead-reckoning (estimating position from last known speed and heading), which drifts rapidly. A smartwatch worn on the wrist tends to handle tree cover slightly better than a phone in a pocket because the antenna has a clearer sky view from the wrist position.

The second is enclosed lift cabins — gondolas, cable cars, and tram cars. The steel and glass structure of an enclosed cabin attenuates GPS signals significantly. On a 20-minute gondola ride, a GPS track will often show a wandering or jagged line that does not follow the actual cable route, sometimes appearing to place you 30 to 50 meters away from the cable. This is normal and expected. Lift segments are identifiable in the track data by their upward vertical movement and consistent speed, and good tracking apps filter them out of the descent-only stats.

Why your track looks jagged on the gondola

The enclosed metal cabin of a gondola or cable car blocks GPS satellites above a certain angle. The receiver loses clean lock and begins oscillating between uncertain position estimates. This is a hardware limitation, not a tracking app bug. Open chairlifts produce much cleaner GPS tracks because the sky is unobstructed above you.

Why cold kills your phone battery

Lithium-ion batteries — the type in every smartphone — rely on a chemical reaction to store and release energy. That reaction slows significantly in cold temperatures. At -10°C, a lithium-ion battery may deliver only 50 to 70% of its rated capacity before the voltage drops below the threshold the device needs to operate, causing a premature "flat battery" reading. Warm the battery up (by moving it to an inside jacket pocket) and the available capacity often appears to recover because the chemical reaction runs at its proper rate again.

On a ski day, this means a phone that normally provides 10 hours of GPS tracking in a warm environment may provide 4 to 5 hours when carried in an exposed thigh pocket on a cold day. GPS is also one of the highest battery-drain functions on a phone — it keeps the GPS radio active continuously. Combining cold temperature and continuous GPS produces rapid battery drain that catches many people out midday.

Practical steps to extend phone battery on the mountain:

Tracking with your phone vs a smartwatch

The choice between tracking with a phone and tracking with a smartwatch is not primarily about accuracy — modern phone GPS and modern watch GPS are comparable in horizontal position quality. The meaningful differences are in convenience, altitude accuracy, battery life, and protection.

Phone tracking

Phone tracking requires the phone to be accessible, which means you are either holding it (not practical while skiing), mounting it on your body (arm band or chest mount), or leaving it in a pocket and trusting it to track without interaction. The locked-in-pocket approach works reasonably well — the phone does not need to be visible to track — but accessing the app mid-mountain to check stats requires taking a glove off, unlocking the phone, and navigating the app. In cold conditions this is annoying enough that many riders do it only at lunch breaks.

Phone GPS antenna position matters more than many people realize. A phone in a tight trouser pocket with the screen facing inward has its GPS antenna partially blocked by your body. A phone in a chest pocket or jacket breast pocket typically has better sky exposure and better GPS lock quality.

Smartwatch tracking

A smartwatch worn on the wrist solves most of the friction issues. It stays accessible for a quick glance, records continuously without any interaction, and keeps the GPS antenna in a consistent position with reasonable sky exposure. The wrist position also means the watch is outside your glove or sleeve, where temperature is cold but not as cold as a phone left in an uninsulated pocket.

The more important advantage of a quality smartwatch for ski tracking is the barometric altimeter, discussed above. For vertical accuracy, a watch with baro beats phone-only GPS tracking clearly. Garmin watches in the Fenix, Forerunner 9xx, and Epix series include barometric altimeters designed for outdoor activities. Apple Watch Series 8 and later also includes a barometric altimeter. Many mid-range Wear OS watches include one as well.

Battery life on a dedicated sports watch running GPS is typically much better than a phone — 10 to 20 hours of GPS recording on a modern sports watch, versus 4 to 6 hours for a phone in the cold. For a full ski week without charging on the mountain, a sports watch is a better choice than a phone as primary tracker.

Glidr has smartwatch companion apps for Garmin (Connect IQ), Apple Watch, and Wear OS. These show your current position, navigation instructions, and speed on your wrist during navigation — so your phone can stay in your pocket while the watch handles the interface.

How Glidr records your day

Glidr uses your device's GPS while navigation is active to track your position on the mountain. This position data underlies both the live navigation display — showing your dot moving on the piste map — and the day's recorded stats.

The app works for skiers and snowboarders equally. The tracking, navigation, and recap features make no distinction between the two disciplines — both move on the same pistes at similar speeds, use the same lifts, and generate the same kinds of GPS tracks.

Because Glidr is designed primarily as a navigation app, GPS is active throughout your navigated day. This continuous GPS recording produces the position data used to calculate distance travelled and vertical descended. The app uses offline maps that are downloaded to your device before you head out, which means GPS tracking continues even when there is no mobile signal — a common situation on many ski mountains, particularly in back-country areas, trees, or between lift stations with marginal coverage.

Glidr is free to download. A Day Pass costs €1.49 and a Weekly Pass costs €4.99 for full feature access.

Offline maps mean offline tracking

Because Glidr maps are downloaded to your device, both navigation and GPS tracking work without any mobile signal. You do not need to be on a cell network to record your day or see your position on the piste map. This matters on ski mountains where signal drops in valleys, trees, and on the back sides of peaks.

Reading your day recap

At the end of your day on the mountain, Glidr shows a day recap with the key stats from your session. Understanding what each figure actually represents helps you interpret them correctly — and know when a number looks off and why.

Distance travelled

This is the total path length of your GPS track for the day, including both descents and lift rides. As noted above, this is larger than the simple run count multiplied by average piste length — turns add lateral distance, and the track records every position sample, so wide traversing turns produce longer path lengths than tight direct descents.

If your distance figure looks surprisingly high, it is usually because of the turn-distance effect or because a lift cable car produced a slightly wandering GPS track that added phantom distance. If it looks surprisingly low, the most common cause is that GPS lost lock in a tunnel, tree section, or enclosed gondola and the tracking paused or dead-reckoned poorly during that gap.

Vertical descended

Vertical is calculated from altitude measurements across your track — the sum of all downward altitude changes, with upward changes (lifts) excluded. On a device without a barometric altimeter, this comes from GPS altitude and will have the accuracy limitations discussed above. On a smartwatch with baro, vertical accuracy is considerably better.

One practical point: vertical is calculated from your device's altitude sensor, not from piste elevation data. If you spend time at a flat mid-mountain terrace, walk around the village at altitude, or ride several long flat traverses, those altitude samples are included in the position data. Modern tracking apps filter out micro-fluctuations (sub-5-meter changes) to avoid counting GPS altitude noise as false vertical, but the specific filtering behavior varies by app.

Runs

Run count in Glidr's day recap reflects the number of distinct descents the app tracked — identified by alternating descent and ascent phases in the GPS altitude data. A run that ends with a long flat traverse to a lift base will still typically be counted correctly, because the direction of travel is predominantly downward from the start of the descent. Very short connector runs between lifts may or may not be counted depending on their vertical content.

Getting accurate vertical and distance

If vertical accuracy matters to you — and for many skiers and snowboarders, that number is the primary stat they care about — the following practices make a meaningful difference.

Use a device with a barometric altimeter

This is the single highest-impact step. A smartphone GPS altitude has typical errors of 10 to 20 meters per reading. A barometric altimeter has typical errors of 1 to 5 meters under stable conditions. Over a day of 15 runs, the difference in accumulated vertical error can be hundreds of meters. If you are serious about vertical tracking, a sports watch with a barometric altimeter is the right tool.

Calibrate at a known altitude

Many sports watches and outdoor GPS devices allow you to manually enter a known altitude to calibrate the barometric sensor. At the start of your ski day, if you know the exact altitude of your base resort (the resort's official elevation is typically on their website), entering this figure into the watch calibration gives the barometer a correct starting point. This is particularly useful at the start of a trip, before the device has had time to establish a stable GPS-altitude cross-reference.

Keep the device exposed

A phone buried deep in a trouser pocket gets a worse sky view than a phone in a chest pocket. A smartwatch under a tight cuff gets a worse sky view than one worn over a thin base-layer sleeve. Neither difference is enormous, but for locations with already-marginal satellite geometry — valleys, steep-walled couloirs, sections under tree canopy — the extra couple of satellite angles from a better-exposed antenna make a difference to fix quality.

Tunnels and covered lift stations

Ski resort tunnels and some covered lift boarding areas cause complete GPS signal loss. A good tracking app handles this gracefully by pausing the track recording or dead-reckoning at low confidence, then resuming cleanly when the satellite view is restored. A poorly handled gap can produce a straight-line phantom track through the mountain interior, adding false distance and distorted vertical. If you notice a sudden straight line on your track in an area where there is a tunnel, this is likely what happened.

Start tracking at the first lift, not the car park

Starting the tracker from your hotel or the car park and walking to the lifts adds pedestrian distance to your ski distance figure. For a clean day's stats, start recording when you are on the mountain and ready to ski — ideally at the base of the first lift or at the top of the first run. Similarly, stop recording when you finish the last run, before walking back through the village. The distinction only matters if you care about "skiing distance" vs "total distance moved while wearing the tracker."

A note on cumulative error

Over a full season, cumulative vertical tracking becomes the interesting number — how many meters of vertical have you descended across the whole winter? For this use case, per-day errors of a few hundred meters become less significant because they average out across many tracked days. A consistent tracking setup (same device, same method every day) produces data that is internally consistent even if the absolute figures have a systematic offset.

Frequently asked questions

Is GPS or barometric altimeter more accurate for tracking vertical skiing?

A barometric altimeter is generally more accurate for measuring vertical descent than GPS altitude. GPS altitude is derived from satellite geometry and typically has a vertical error of 10 to 20 meters under open sky, and worse under tree cover or steep terrain. A barometric altimeter measures atmospheric pressure, which changes consistently with altitude, producing vertical accuracy of 1 to 5 meters under stable conditions. The caveat is that barometric readings drift with weather — a pressure front moving through can make the altimeter read a 50-meter change that did not happen. Quality smartwatches with barometric altimeters correct for this by periodically cross-referencing GPS altitude, getting the best of both sensors.

Why does my phone drain battery so fast when ski tracking?

Cold temperatures reduce the chemical reaction rate inside lithium-ion batteries, which cuts effective capacity significantly. A phone that provides 10 hours of GPS tracking in summer may give 4 to 5 hours on a cold ski day, because the battery cannot deliver its rated charge at low temperatures. The actual charge is still present — warming the phone (such as placing it in an inside jacket pocket) often shows the battery percentage recovering. To extend phone battery on the mountain: keep the phone in a chest or inner pocket rather than an exposed trouser pocket, reduce screen brightness, disable cellular data if you have offline maps, and carry a small powerbank in your jacket.

How many runs can I expect to do in a ski day?

Run count varies enormously with the resort, lift speed, and run length. At a resort with fast gondolas and short top-to-bottom descents, an intermediate skier or snowboarder can complete 20 to 30 runs in a day. At a resort with long vertical descents where each run takes 15 to 20 minutes, the same rider might complete 10 to 15 runs. Total vertical is a more meaningful measure of day output than raw run count, because a day with 15 long runs at 500 vertical meters each is more skiing than a day with 30 short runs at 150 meters each.

What is a good distance to ski in a day?

Total piste distance for a full ski day varies by rider level and resort layout. Beginner skiers and snowboarders typically cover 15 to 30 km per day on piste. Intermediate riders typically cover 30 to 60 km. Advanced riders at efficient resorts with high-speed lifts can cover 60 to 100 km on an active day. These figures are for actual piste distance — the path length skied — which is meaningfully longer than straight-line distance. A single 3-kilometer red run with side-to-side turns may show 4 to 5 km in a tracker due to the lateral distance of each turn.

Does a ski tracking app work for snowboarders as well as skiers?

Yes. GPS-based ski tracking apps record movement regardless of whether you are on skis or a snowboard. The same distance, vertical, and speed data applies equally to both. The only stat that is sometimes rendered differently is run detection — some apps use speed or acceleration patterns to detect when you are on a chairlift versus actively riding, and these heuristics work equivalently for skiers and snowboarders since both use the same lifts and have similar speed profiles on the slope. Glidr works for skiers and snowboarders equally.

Why does my GPS track look jagged or show me going off-piste on lifts?

GPS position jitter on lifts and in lift towers happens because dense steel structures in gondola and cable car cabins interfere with GPS satellite signals. The receiver loses clean signal lock and begins estimating position with higher uncertainty, producing the jagged or wandering track. This is a hardware limitation common to all phone and watch GPS chips — it is not a bug in the tracking app. On a chairlift with open-sky exposure and no enclosing metal cabin, GPS tracks are usually clean. In a gondola, the track may wander 20 to 50 meters from the actual cable line.