It has been a very long time since I last posted to my blog and instead of catching up I'm going to show off some of the fun ways technology can help you understand the geography you play on.  I have a season pass to Northstar ski resort and recently went snowboarding with my tech-savvy cousin.  Unbeknownst to me his cell phone is very high tech (especially compared to my basic prepaid) and he was using GPS software to log our day of riding (Firefox is telling me "unbeknownst" isn't a word).

The green marker in the maps below is the mid-mountain lodge, where he told the software to start logging.  The red marker is at "the village" where we eventually finished after riding in all the areas marked in red.  The areas in dark red are places we rode multiple times.  Zoom in using the satellite view map and check out some of the tree runs we took!



Topographic Map View



View northstar in a larger map



Satellite Photo View



View northstar in a larger map



Street Map View



View northstar in a larger map


Drastic elevation changes were logged due to riding lifts up then boarding down!  The first four elevation spikes were to the summit when we were riding the backside.  The rest were from riding the not-as-high Lookout terrain.







The phone claims a top speed of over 38 MPH but I doubt that is accurate.  Maybe his phone flew out of his pocket at a high rate of speed!  ;-)


Other noteworthy statistics include:
Total Distance: 31.1 mi (including the lifts)
Min Elevation: 6298 ft
Max Elevation: 8596 ft
Elevation Gain: 19475 ft


PS:  I just realized how horrible my blog looks on high-resolution, big screen systems.  I need to fix that.



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