Slopes: Ski & Snowboard 4+

Update April 2023:
I’ve skied well over 100 days since I first reviewed this app, and Slopes is an absolutely indispensable part of my ski day. I am a ski instructor and I love having the data from the day to share with my students; when skiing outside of work I love the integration with Strava, the ability to treat Slopes like a private ski journal, and the friend location tracking— incredibly well designed. There are a few features I’d like to see added or modified, and response from the team has been fast and enthusiastic. Everyone who slides on snow should be using this app, it’s awesome! (Oh and SO good having it run on my watch, super easy to use and doesn’t drain my phone battery.) The free version is excellent; I wound up subscribing because I want to support a small developer, and the extra features are pretty cool.
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Original review april 2022:
I’ve only used Slopes for two days skiing so far, but I’m incredibly impressed. The tracking is flawless, it doesn’t drain my phone battery too much, and the ways the data can be replayed and logged is wonderful. The free version is excellent, and absolutely worth using, and after trying the pay version yesterday I’m certain I’ll be subscribing next season for the 3D map alone— so cool! (I currently have Slopes automatically send the day’s data to Strava— Strava doesn’t always read the lifts correctly, but that’s on Strava, not Slopes.)

Thanks so much for the review, Em! We really appreciate your support, it allows us to continue working on the app and improving it year on year 💥

At the start of the ski season, I tried to use Slopes, but iOS had offloaded it since I hadn’t used it during the off-season. I couldn’t get it to download again and after several tries, finally discovered that it now only works on iOS 13 and up. The developer claims you can keep using the old version, but if you have to reinstall, you can’t get the old one back. Now switching to a competitor that still supports iOS 12. As a developer myself, it’s generally a good idea to support at least the previous iOS version.

Update: After the developer contacted me, I was able to reinstall an older version of the app. Apple did not make this easy to find. I added two more stars due to the developer’s prompt response. However, I would still like to see support for at least one iOS version back for new updates. Most apps I checked still support back to iOS 10.

Update 2: The developer supports iOS 12 again! Greatly appreciated and definitely noticed performance improvements and less battery drain. Thanks again for making this change!

Hey Starkiller, you can totally still use it with the 6 (since you previously downloaded it)! Apple just doesn't make that 100% clear how. In the App Store go to the Updates tab, and you'll see the "Purchased" option at the top. Hit that and find Slopes in the list. Apple lets you download older versions of apps as long as the developer approves it. I made sure to keep a version around for people on 12. I've got ya covered.

Update: I went ahead and put in a lot of work to retrofit iOS 12 support into Slopes, meeting your request to support one version older of iOS. Hope you enjoy all the new goodies!

I was so excited to start using this app, but from day one have had problems. The primary issue is that you can get through an entire day of runs, hitting speeds you wanted recorded, making tracks you wanted to review, understanding the vertical feet that you dropped, etc. This app is not only unreliable, which unto itself you might simply say “oh well, not a great app“, but this app actually is disappointing because after an exciting day on the slopes you sit down, open your pocket, take out the app and take a look at it - and it simply says “no GPS data recorded”. After the first time this happened I read the troubleshooting guide and it said that you needed to make sure you had a reliable connection. Next time I confirmed that I did (my other apps all recorded). Next time GPS data didn’t record I was told it was likely do to keeping the app in an outside pocket where the phone got cold - keep it in an inside pocket to ensure warmth and then it will record your GPS location - so I did. It still did not work. Today I skied at Breck in 38° sunny weather and finished the day, looked at the device, and it said “no GPS data recorded“. I would be OK if an app simply didn’t work, but when you’re so excited to see how you ripped down the mountain side, and this app, let you down, makes you realize that you need to start looking for other apps. I would not waste my time with this app.

Hey Jeffrey, I'm really sad to read this review. I know how disappointing it would have been to find that nothing had been recorded at the end of a great day. It sounds like you did all the right things to improve GPS accuracy and it should have worked, unless there's some kind of permissions issue. It's not clear if you've been in touch with customer support already, but either way, if you'd like to give us another chance please send us a message from within the app via the Account tab -> Help & Support for the attention of Emma. This will send us some debug logs that show us what's going wrong so we can get it working for you. It's also possible that that recording was in fact backed up and can be recovered too.