The Essential Apps for a Ski Season

The ones that are actually useful — and the ones most people download and never open again

Most people arrive in resort with a phone full of apps downloaded during the planning phase and never opened again. This is the opposite of that — the ones that actually earn their place over a full season, sorted by what you'll use them for.

Mountain weather

Windy.com is the one app worth going out of your way to learn. It shows wind speed and direction at multiple altitude levels simultaneously — 850 hPa, 700 hPa, 500 hPa, which roughly correspond to valley, mid-mountain, and summit in the Alps. You can see where snowfall is forecast, when a weather window opens, and whether the top lifts will actually be running before you queue for them. Most resort weather apps pull from a single forecast model and display one altitude. Windy lets you compare models and understand the full vertical picture. Free. Use it.

Météo-France for the French Alps specifically. It's government-sourced data and consistently more reliable than commercial apps for French mountain forecasts. The mountain summit forecast is the relevant view — not the town-level forecast. If you're based in France for the season, this is worth having alongside Windy.

MeteoBlue covers Europe well and is a good secondary source for non-French resorts — Austria, Switzerland, Italy. Useful when you want to cross-reference Windy's forecast rather than just taking one model's word for it.

Mountain-forecast.com isn't technically an app but works well in a mobile browser. You search for a specific peak and get forecasts at summit, mid, and base level. The interface is dated but the data is genuinely summit-specific in a way most apps aren't. Good for high-alpine route planning.

Resort apps (the Whistler Blackcomb app, the Killy App for Val d'Isère and Tignes, the Three Valleys app, and so on): download the one for your resort. Quality varies enormously. Most are built primarily for tourists. The genuinely useful features are grooming maps — knowing which runs were groomed overnight is useful if you're up early — and real-time lift status during the day. Don't use them for weather.

Navigation and tracking

Maps.me does one important thing: it works entirely offline. Download your region before your season starts and you have working maps when your phone has no signal — which is the situation you'll frequently be in at altitude. Road navigation, hiking paths, and enough detail to navigate around a resort town without data. Free, and worth having even if you rarely need it.

Komoot is better for planning ski touring and backcountry routes. If you're getting into ski touring during the season — which many seasonaires do by month two or three — Komoot gives you elevation profiles, route planning, and a community of people uploading tours in the same area. Less immediately useful than Maps.me on day one, but worth knowing about.

Slopes tracks your skiing: runs, vertical, max speed, total distance over a season. The data is mostly interesting in retrospect — looking back at a full season's stats is satisfying. It's not useful for daily decisions but it's a low-effort way to have a record of your season. Requires your phone to be on your person rather than in a locker.

Safety

Avalanche danger ratings aren't an app — they're a daily published number from regional avalanche warning services — but knowing where to find them is non-negotiable before going off-piste. In Europe: avalanche.report covers the Alps, Pyrenees, and Scandinavia and aggregates reports from multiple national services. In Canada: avalanche.ca. In the US: avalanchecenter.org. The scale runs 1 (low) to 5 (very high). Level 3 (considerable) is where most fatalities occur. Check it the same way you check the weather — before you go, every time.

Emergency numbers don't need an app, but have them stored: 112 works across the EU and will connect you to emergency services in any European country. 911 for North America. 999 for the UK. Mountain rescue in most European countries is coordinated through the same 112 number. Have your resort's local mountain rescue number stored separately — it's usually on the back of your lift pass or the resort's website.

Recco is not an app either, but worth checking: it's a passive reflector system embedded in most quality ski jackets, helmets, and some gloves. Mountain rescue helicopters carry Recco detectors that can locate the reflector through snow. Check if your outerwear has a Recco reflector sewn in — it's usually a small logo on the label. It doesn't replace a beacon but it's better than nothing for inbounds skiing.

Finance and shared living

Wise and Revolut for currency and day-to-day spending. Covered in more detail in the banking and money guide — but if you haven't set one of these up before arriving in resort, do it this week.

Splitwise for tracking shared household expenses. At its simplest: everyone logs what they spend on shared groceries, cleaning supplies, or communal meals. At the end of the week or month you settle up. Without it, the "who owes what" conversation happens in the kitchen at 11pm after a long shift. With it, the numbers are already agreed.

Communication and community

WhatsApp is how resort life actually runs. Your employer will coordinate shifts on it. Your housemates will use it for the house group. Your friends from training week will use it. Every social arrangement in resort goes through WhatsApp — if you're in a country where a different platform dominates locally (WeChat in some contexts, LINE in Japan) you'll still need WhatsApp for the seasonaire community specifically.

Facebook groups for your specific resort. Not an app in the useful sense but access them via the Facebook mobile app. Resort-specific seasonaire groups are where accommodation gets listed, jobs get advertised informally, ski equipment gets bought and sold, and local knowledge gets shared. Search for "[Resort name] seasonaires" or "[Resort name] staff" before you arrive.

Language

Duolingo is worth using in the two or three months before your season starts, not after you arrive. The gamified daily nudge model works for building basic vocabulary in French, German, Italian, or Japanese — enough to handle a supermarket, read a label, or say something apologetic to a local. It won't make you conversational, but basic competence in the local language is genuinely appreciated in non-English-speaking resorts and makes daily life easier.

Google Translate with camera mode is the genuinely useful one once you're there. Point your camera at a menu, a form, a notice on a building, or a medicine packet and it translates the text live without you needing to type anything. The translation quality varies but for practical day-to-day reading — understanding a rental contract clause, working out which tram to get — it's good enough.

What to skip

Resort-branded tracking apps like Vail's EpicMix: built for marketing purposes, not skiing purposes. Slopes does the same job better. Standard phone weather apps (the pre-installed ones): useless for mountain-specific decisions. Any app that promises "the best ski conditions" based on crowd-sourced reports — the signal-to-noise ratio is poor and avalanche.report is the only conditions source that actually matters for safety decisions.