Is hyperconnectivity enhancing or hurting ski experience?
By Megan Michelson, Powder
Imagine a world where drones fly overhead while you rip a steep line through powder-stuffed trees. A tiny camera inside the drone captures footage of you, making even the average skier look like a breakthrough performer in a TGR flick. Magically, within a day or so, a polished, edited video appears in your inbox, primed to score a gazillion likes on Facebook.
That is the world Jason Soll envisioned. And it becomes reality this winter with the launch of Soll’s Silicon Valley tech start-up, Cape Productions. While dozens of ski resorts are in the midst of writing policies that ban the use of personal drones, others are finding ways to incorporate them. This winter, skiers at resorts like Squaw Valley, and Fernie, British Columbia, can hire Cape’s team of drone pilots and professional editors to produce an aerial video of their day on snow. For under $200, you’ll get a two-minute edit within 48 hours. It’s the SharpShooter of the future.
Soll, 25, grew up in Ohio, and thanks to Warren Miller movies and a snow-covered mound in Pennsylvania, he became a skier. As a youngster, he took trips to Utah with his family, where he developed a love for soft snow and the Stein Eriksen buffet at Deer Valley. After college, he worked as a product design consultant at Google X, ground zero for gadgets built to make radical change. As a graduate student at Stanford’s Business School, he came up with the idea for Cape, named because it transforms Clark Kents into goggle-clad Supermen.
“I knew of all these drone products in development, but I wasn’t excited about having to deal with the hardware,” says Soll. “Then I realized we could deploy the technology as a service, not a product. That would also solve the other challenges of video production, like editing and distribution. Those skiers with GoPros and selfie sticks, they want to capture the moment, but many just wind up with raw data on their hard drive. Our big idea was eliminate the hard work and let people capture the moment without any distraction.”
Skiing lost its soul a long time ago. It seems now for most people to be some sort of competition-who can take the most selfies, show everyone it’s all about me, me, me. Everything that resorts post about conditions is questionable. Heavenly shows these great pictures taken probably years before but then forgets to mention they go on wind hold as soon as the first gust blows in. My best skiing memories are still in my head–I don’t need them to be in pictures or video. The one guy in the article mentioned that 7000 ft of vertical was a good day? That’s just getting warmed up!!!
The ski slopes were too crowded 25 yrs ago…to really ski. Can’t even imagine the crowd conditions today!