Anyone wear an altimeter watch while skiing/boarding?

[Vano]

I have a Suunto S6 and absolutely LOVE IT!!!

The watch is very percise in my opinion. I have taken it to Jay Peak, Breckenridge, Vail and Silverton. The peak elevation I got up to was in Breckenridge and Silverton. I Silverton I hiked up to almost 13,000 and in Breck I hiked up to Peak 8 which I think is right around 13,000 as well. The watch was almost dead on. I have never seen it be off by more than 100 feet - which on a 13,000 scale is pretty accurate.

The watch can do the following:
- On demand report of runs skied
- On demand report of overall descent feet/meters
- On demand report of overall ascent feet/meters
- On demand descet rate and ascent rate
- On demand graph of altitute changes
- Clilometer (not terribly accurate) measures inclide of the slope - you can lock the angle in and ski down it, it will measure your average speed on the way down.
- Weather - pressure, temperature

All this information is logged and can be loaded on your computer for extremely detailed (data points every 2 seconds if you want) graphs and reports on your ski day.

Does the watch make you ski better? No.
Does the watch make you ski harder? YES.
Does the watch entertain on the way up? YES.
Is it worth the $350 price tag? Your choice. Mine was a gift so it was free.

So many times i have asked myself "Hmm... i wonder how many runs i skied today?" or "Hmm, did i ski more runs today or yesterday?" or "hmmm, I wonder how steep this slope is" Now I can answer all those questions.

 

[dmc]

How does the watch make you ski harder?

 

[bvibert]

Unfortunately, the relationship of pressure to elevation is nonlinear, so you may not get the results you expect,

True, true. You can calibrate at home, I suppose.
Okaqy, this is getting comlicated, and threatens to take all the fun out of the graph that I could get, if I had one.

Spoilsport, with your science and logic.

Just get a GPS - it does the same thing - right?

I still use compasses.. But I want a GPS...

How accurate is the typical GPS in terms of Altitude? I did a quick google search and found that users can expect the altitude to be off by as much as 75' on some units. It that typical, or are they generally better than that??

 

[dmc]

How accurate is the typical GPS in terms of Altitude? I did a quick google search and found that users can expect the altitude to be off by as much as 75' on some units. It that typical, or are they generally better than that??

I'm really not sure..

 

[ctenidae]

Thsi article makes a pretty goodexplanation of GPS altitude errors:

http://gpsinformation.net/main/altitude.htm

Especially the last line:
Those who use GPS altitude to aid in landing their small plane should have their insurance policies paid up at all times.

 

[bvibert]

Thsi article makes a pretty goodexplanation of GPS altitude errors:

http://gpsinformation.net/main/altitude.htm

Especially the last line:
Those who use GPS altitude to aid in landing their small plane should have their insurance policies paid up at all times.

Thats the first page that I found too, but its pretty old (2001). Have they gotten any better since then?

 

[ctenidae]

Probably not by much. I noticed the date, too. They mentioned the DGPS service, which is the only serious upgrade of late I'veheard of. Admittedly, I don't realy pay attention to GPS news, but that's the sort of thing that would jump out at me if it happened, I think. There has probably been some improvement in the algorithms used to determine altitude, and possibly some programmed fixes for locations (maybe a store of coastline coordinates or something similar). Based on that guy's rerasoning, there's really not much room for improvement, considering the difficulties.

 

[bvibert]

Thats what I kind figured, although I didn't read the whole article, just skimmed it looking for accuracy numbers.

 

[dmc]

Plus there's more GPS satelites now then 5 years ago...

 

[Vano]

How does the watch make you ski harder?

Cause I am a complete numbers dork. I want to always log faster descent rates and more vertical. This usually applies when I ski it boring places like Blue Mountain PA where the only excitement is not skiing exciting and challenging terrain but pushing your own body to the max by yoyo-ing up and down the moutain.

 

[dmc]

How does the watch make you ski harder?

Cause I am a complete numbers dork. I want to always log faster descent rates and more vertical. This usually applies when I ski it boring places like Blue Mountain PA where the only excitement is not skiing exciting and challenging terrain but pushing your own body to the max by yoyo-ing up and down the moutain.

Cool...

Just dont let the PA Ski and Ride people hear ya dissing Blue Nob...

 

[RossiSkier]

DMC, you're always stirring up the pot.

 

[dmc]

DMC, you're always stirring up the pot.

hey... It's what I do...

 

[bvibert]

DMC, you're always stirring up the pot.

hey... It's what I do...

Thats why we keep ya around D...

 

[dmc]

I see I called it BLue Nob instead of Blue Mountain...

Was it actually called Blue Knob at one time - or am I just losing it...

 

[bvibert]

I see I called it BLue Nob instead of Blue Mountain...

Was it actually called Blue Knob at one time - or am I just losing it...

Seems to be two different places, Blue Knob and Blue Mountain...

 

[Lostone]

DON'T make me talk SCIENCE here!

:wink:

First of all, how can a watch tell the incline of the slope? It would need anothr input. It can tell how fast you changed elevations, but wouldn't know if you were crawling down a double diamond or screaming down a green dot.

I have a Sunto Altimax. It tells vertical, but doesn't know if you are going up or a low is coming in, so you have to take that with some grains of salt. (I've seen my condo gain and lose over 300'! )

It also tells you the temperature... on your arm... inside your jacket... :-?

If you take the ascending and descending, and average them, I think you get a pretty good idea of what you skied/hiked.

I also have a Magellan Meridian GPS and have seen myself climb over 100' by moving on what I thought was flat ground.

The Meridian does not give you a total of vertical, but keeps track and you can export the log and figure it out.

After much trials and tribulations, I also bought the Magellan Mapsend program. It takes the tracks that show where you've been. It gives you speed and distance per leg. It gives you a vertical profile so you can see what you went up and down.

I never look at these when I'm skiing. I ski to enjoy myself, and just carry whichever toys I want to carry. Then I look at/record the data, when I'm home.

I skied 487.6 vertical miles last year. That is 2,574,587 vertical feet.

Do I need to get out, more? :wink:


.

 

[ozskier]

I use my GPS, works much better.

 

[tekweezle]

so what GPS do any of you carry when you ski or board?

 

[Vano]

Re: DON'T make me talk SCIENCE here!

:wink:

First of all, how can a watch tell the incline of the slope? It would need anothr input. It can tell how fast you changed elevations, but wouldn't know if you were crawling down a double diamond or screaming down a green dot.

I have a Sunto Altimax. It tells vertical, but doesn't know if you are going up or a low is coming in, so you have to take that with some grains of salt. (I've seen my condo gain and lose over 300'! )
.

Your first question regarding the inclide - the S6 comes with a clinometer. As I said it isn't terribly accurate but if you lay it down flat on the slope you are skiing it will measure and lock in that incline. This probably gives you no better than 5-7%s of play in accuracy but at least its a start. This is particularly helpful if you are skiing out of bounds or at a mountain where vertical, incline and all that are not readily available.

Now as far as the pressure vs. altitude argument. You are right, on that 1 time a year occurence where the pressure changes dramatically over a few hours, the watch will not be as accurate - but in high mountains that change usually means snow coming fast and at that point, who cares to play with silly toys like the watch anyway. 95% of the time people ski, barometric pressure remains almost constant and the only change is associated with altitude. Now even in that 5% chance where a major change in barometric pressure takes place your Top and Bottom elevation will change proportially. If high pressure moves in, then you will read 400 feet lower at the top and 400 feet lower at the botton (give or take) so your commulative vertical and your ascent/descent can still be calculated with some accuracy.

Below is a link to a graph that I pulled off my S6 watch. It was in Silverton last year, we did 5 runs, 4 with hikes, 1 very short 5 minute hike and 3 20 minutes ones. You can see how percise the elevation the watch reported is over the 7 hour period. The weather was changeable, it was slowly becoming more clowdy as the day went on.

http://community.webshots.com/mypho...D=269010334&photoID=269012852&security=mUiYwP

The only reason why the low points after each run are different is because in Silverton, depending on which line you ski, you pop out on a different access road and elevation.