smorgasbord-design

Detail of the Morzine piste map

I just got back from skiing in the Port de Soleil area in France. It’s only the second time I’ve been skiing, the first being three cold and very wintery days atop Cairngorm Mountain in Scotland. I always expected the French Alps to be a more impressive affair; freeway-wide pistes, tree-lined rat-runs and acres and acres of skiable terrain. Add to that the inumerable chairlifts, gondolas (correct plural) and tow-lifts and the region was a beffudling confusion of signage and mapping.

I’d spend a large part of my afternoons (i.e. outside of our guided lessons) fixated on a tatty series of piste maps, glancing myopically at signage and lift names and trying to figure out where on earth I was, where I had come from and how I was going to get anywhere. This confusion was made a little worse by my inability to ski much other than ‘easy’ reds and (of course) the blues.

My issue is very much with the piste map. Even before I’d ever been on skis I’d seen these posted in hotels and magazines when summering in ski regions. Generally over-stylised in water-colour or faux-photographic rendering, they attempt to do more than just locate the various pieces of infrastructure, they are attempting to visualise a mountain range in all its wintery glory.

And this is – one of the reasons – where they fail. For a start the ones I was using rarely showed the direction of the piste. Of course, you can only really ski downhill and it’s not always clear in which direction the piste descends. Secondly the intersection of piste and lift was often ambiguous. Pistes may appear to end at a lift but the reality may be that the lift is the other side of an uphill ridge. Finally, the colour and weight of the line indicating a lift was unhelpfully typically black which – as you may know – causes a little confusion when establishing if it’s something I should avoid (difficult piste) or savour (circa 10 minutes of peaceful ascent).

My personal take is that we should follow the example of Harry Beck, the chap who rather sensibly realised that the relative geographic location and landmarking on the original London Underground maps was irrelevant to the subterranean traveller and thus a schematic representation was more effective. Using landmarks is not helpful on the piste, whilst it may be effective to the guide or experienced navigator, the majority of recreational users will find the succession of snowy peaks and wooded valleys impossible to differentiate – especially in low visiblity conditions when correct navigation is even more crucial. The maps, for example, only work in one orientation due to their use of shading and perspective.

So the market is open for the production of a piste map that supports:

1 :: piste direction (and potential graduations as green, blue, red & black not detailed enough)
2 ::  lift speed and capacity
3 :: lift and piste interchanges
4 :: non-geographical routing

I’m going to take a section of the Morzine (Pleny side) map and make an attempt at this, if you know of any Piste schematics that are a little more like this then let me know. I’ve also see examples like Whistler’s and Avoriaz’s that allow you to switch features on-off but this isn’t exactly practical on the slopes…

Let’s see where this goes.