Ski maps re-imagined
Unless you know your favourite ski area by heart, finding your way around and navigating the slopes and lifts, especially in large and complex areas, can be tricky.
Worst case scenario may be that you get completely lost, something you
want to avoid particulalry at the end of a day on the slopes when you
need to catch the last lift down to the valley.
To orient themselves skiers traditionally find a few different
wayfinding tools at their disposal such as printed maps,
large boards displaying a panorama map of the area and
direction signage pointing to nearby peaks, villages and
huts.
The panorama map, considered the de facto standard for representing
alpine winter sport areas geographically, is ubiquitous throughout most
ski areas and used to entice prospective visitors and to accompany them
once on the slopes.
Personal expierence of getting lost, in part because we couldn't
understand the panorama map, led me to embark on trying out a different
way to cartographically show the ski area. The result is the map you see
below.
Shown above is a planimetric view of a ski area in Austria. Click here to learn more about this map.
This planimetric orientation and navigation plan for the Tyrolean ski area SkiWelt Wilder Kaiser Brixenthal is a geographically correct representation of SkiWelt including all its ski slopes and lifts. The plan can be seen as an alternative to the usual panoramic maps, which are often unsuitable for orientation and navigation due to their perspective distortions of the topography.