The winter battery battle
Before you even open a tracking app, there's one enemy you need to understand: the cold. Your iPhone's lithium battery relies on a chemical reaction to produce power, and that reaction slows dramatically as temperatures drop. The result isn't a gradual, predictable fade - the phone can appear to have 40% left and then shut off suddenly, because the voltage has dropped below what the device can use.
At a ski resort, where temperatures routinely sit below freezing and you're not generating much body heat while riding a lift, this can turn a full-day tracker into a two-run tracker pretty quickly.
Keep it close
The single most effective thing you can do costs nothing: keep your iPhone in an inner chest pocket, against your base layer. Your core body heat will keep the battery chemistry working through most of a ski day.
The power bank rule
Bringing a power bank is smart - but never plug in a freezing phone. Charging a lithium battery below 0°C causes something called lithium plating, where metallic lithium deposits form on the anode. This is permanent damage that reduces capacity and, in extreme cases, can be a safety risk. If your phone has been out in the cold, let it warm up inside the lodge for 15–20 minutes before connecting a charger.
The free & native route - Apple Watch Workout app
If you already own an Apple Watch, you might be surprised how capable the built-in Workout app already is for skiing and snowboarding. Open it on the day, select Downhill Skiing or Snowboarding, and it quietly does a lot of the heavy lifting in the background.
It uses the watch's built-in GPS and barometric altimeter to automatically segment your day. Here's what it tracks natively:
A post-workout GPS trace shows up right in the iPhone's Fitness or Health app after your session. For casual days on the slopes, it's honestly great - and it keeps your Activity Rings ticking over.
The trade-off
The native app gives you the raw numbers, but the post-skiing experience is fairly basic. The Fitness app does show run-by-run stats, but the presentation is simple data blocks — there's no interactive trail map, no real-time performance display while you're riding, and no highly customisable layouts. If you want a richer way to relive and share your day on the mountain, that's where dedicated apps come in.
Dedicated winter trackers - going beyond the basics
The magic of smart recording
The party trick of any good ski tracker is automatic run detection. By combining GPS and a barometric altimeter, the app can tell whether you're going up (you're on a lift) or going down (you're on a run). You hit Start at the beginning of the day, slip your phone back in your pocket, and the app silently splits your session into lifts and descents - no tapping required at the top of each run.
This matters because the metrics skiers actually care about are based purely on your descents:
- Speed — only your speed on the way down counts. Creeping up a button lift at 4 km/h shouldn't drag down your top speed.
- Vertical metres (or feet) descended — the classic metric for judging how hard you worked.
- Number of runs — satisfying to watch this number climb throughout the day.
The app landscape
Slopes & Ski Tracks
The established giants
Both apps have been around for a long time and have large user bases, with a broad range of features built up over many seasons. Worth noting that both use a freemium model, so some of the more detailed stats and analysis tools require a subscription.
- GPS tracking
- Run detection
- Speed stats
- Subscription for full stats
Snowmate Modern alternative
Built for skiers and snowboarders who want clean, accurate tracking without the clutter. Snowmate focuses on getting the fundamentals right - precise altitude tracking, automatic run detection, and a UI that's actually pleasant to glance at mid-mountain.
A few things worth noting: your data lives in your own iCloud account rather than on a third-party server, there's no external account to create, and you can attach photos to your sessions to build a personal journal of your mountain trips over the winter. It's designed around the idea that your skiing data belongs to you.
- Accurate altitude tracking
- Auto run detection
- iCloud sync - your data
- No account needed
- Photo journal
- Clean UI
Maximising battery while tracking
Even with your phone tucked against your chest, a day of GPS tracking is a meaningful drain. Here's how the best apps - and a few good habits - help you stay in the green until après-ski.
What drains the battery
Three main culprits: constant GPS polling, background processing while the app logs your route, and the screen staying on. The good news is all three are manageable.
Screen-off tracking
A well-built tracker should work perfectly with the screen completely off or dimmed in your pocket. If an app requires the screen to stay on to keep recording, look elsewhere.
Offline-first GPS
GPS is satellite-based and works entirely without a cell signal. A good app caches resort maps locally and logs data on-device, so patchy mountain reception won't interrupt your tracking or drain the battery while it hunts for a signal. Mountain cell coverage is notoriously unreliable - this isn't a minor detail.
Gloves-on UI
Touching a screen with frozen fingers or thick gloves is miserable. The ideal setup: hit Start at the base of the mountain and don't touch your phone again until you're inside with a hot chocolate. Apps with an Apple Watch companion or automated start make this completely painless.
Mountain reception
Cell signal is notoriously patchy on most mountains. A tracker that relies on cloud connectivity for basic logging is asking for trouble. GPS-first, sync-later is the right architecture for a reliable mountain app.
Quick checklist before your first run
Phone in inner chest pocket ✓ Power bank in the bag (not plugged in yet) ✓ Tracking app started ✓ Screen locked ✓ Go ski.
Tracking your days on the mountain is one of those things that starts as curiosity - "how fast was that last run?" - and ends up becoming a habit you genuinely look forward to reviewing at the end of the day. Get the setup right once, and it runs itself.