Is This the End of the Trail Map?

At the end of this month, the artist James Niehues will be inducted into the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame, in recognition of the almost 200 trail maps he has painted over his 34-year career. Skiers from Mt. Bachelor, Ore., to Sunday River, Maine, and many points in between, have held his work in their hands as they try to find the easiest — or hardest — way down.

But perhaps not for much longer.

Ski areas are increasingly cutting back on the number of pocket-size paper trail maps they print and distribute. The reasons range from cost savings and environmental concerns to promoting resort-specific apps that offer a slew of interactive features in addition to digital maps. Last winter many ski areas didn’t put out the usual stacks of maps as a Covid measure, but the trend goes well beyond pandemic protocol.

At Southern California’s Big Bear Mountain Resort, “we haven’t printed pocket maps in two-plus years for both cost and pandemic reasons,” said Justin Kanton, a resort spokesman. Instead, the ski area directs guests to its app, the QR codes posted on signs around the area and the maps affixed to the safety bars on all of the quad chairlifts (a feature at many resorts).

Farther north at California’s Mammoth Mountain (which, like Big Bear, is one of 14 ski areas owned by Alterra Mountain Company), the same push to digital sources is taking place. “It’s a much better guest experience,” said Tim LeRoy, a spokesman. “In the apps for both Mammoth and Big Bear, you get real-time information about lift and terrain accessibility, grooming updates, lift line times and even the locations of our roving food trucks.”

Powdr, which operates 10 ski areas including Snowbird in Utah and Copper Mountain in Colorado, has reduced the number of trail maps it prints across all of its resorts and added QR codes to the map holders that once held paper maps; they connect to a digital version, said spokeswoman Alana Watkins.

At Aspen’s four mountains in Colorado, fewer printed maps — 30,000 at present, down from as many as 300,000 in the past — are part of the resort’s sustainability initiative, according to the spokeswoman Hannah Dixon. Moreover, those maps are printed on a more durable paper that’s made from mineral powder instead of trees. (Several other ski areas also use the paper for their maps, including Idaho’s Schweitzer Mountain and Deer Valley in Utah.)

Likewise, in a pilot program at Vail Resorts’ 37 ski areas, printed trail maps must now be requested, part of Vail’s stated commitment to reaching a zero net operating impact by 2030, said Rachel Levitsky, the spokeswoman for Vail’s Beaver Creek resort.

Even at tradition-bound Mad River Glen in Vermont (where the original single chair was replaced by yet another single when an upgrade was needed), a QR code on signs around the mountain leads skiers to a map on the website to cut down on paper waste, said the spokesman Ry Young. The resort still offers paper maps; a recent revision, in fact, was Mr. Niehues’ last big project.

Mr. Niehues, who retired last year, said that his maps aren’t just about “guiding you down the mountain but showing you its potential and what it offers.” To convey that, he created three-dimensional scenes with meticulously rendered details. “I really kept the skiers in mind and tried to make it as realistic as I could,” he added. “I always felt that it was important to show the terrain, the surroundings, the trees.”

These works of art, whether by Mr. Niehues or others, often outlast a ski vacation, morphing into a souvenir that lets you further study the mountain on days you wish you were still there or even compare changes over the years at a favorite resort. That’s why an avid skier like Stuart Winchester has a drawer full of hundreds of maps — he’s even decorated his Brooklyn laundry room with a couple of dozen of them.

“I like the physical trail map as a token of your ski day,” said Mr. Winchester, an internal communications director at ViacomCBS who also runs the Storm Skiing newsletter and podcast about resort trends and how they affect skiers.

But, as apps offer an increasingly sophisticated level of functionality, their value for tech-savvy skiers is undeniable. For instance, Powdr launched a feature last winter at Vermont’s Killington and at Snowbird that shows skiers where they and their friends are on the mountain in real time; Mt. Bachelor added the feature for this season. Vail’s comprehensive EpicMix app now includes a daily forecast of lift line wait times at 12 of the company’s resorts for better planning from the start.

A particularly intriguing amenity comes from Lumiplan, a French company that makes signs and apps for ski areas; it’s developing an interactive daily itinerary option that the company’s executive vice president, Julien Chassagne, called “the future of the trail map.” Say that you want to spend a day skiing as many intermediate mogul runs as you can, eat lunch at a certain restaurant and then end up at a particular base area location — enter those preferences into the app and it will provide you with a game plan. The feature is currently being tested out at Serre Chevalier, a ski area in the French Alps.

But it’s likely too soon to call the actual death of the traditional pocket-size map, said Garry Milliken, a graphic designer who creates maps that can be printed or reproduced digitally through his New York-based company, VistaMap. “The good, old-fashioned trail map is still a primary source of information,” he said. He has seen technological approaches come and go during his 30 years in the business and emphasizes the usability of “being able to read and hold something in your hand, regardless of the temperature or the weather.”

That brings up the inconvenience of talking off warm mittens on a chairlift to operate a phone screen — not to mention the possibility of dropping the phone off the lift. Moreover, smartphone batteries and cold temperatures don’t coexist well. “I was skiing yesterday at 6 degrees below,” said Mr. Winchester in January. “I wasn’t going to take my phone out.”

Certainly some resorts recognize the attachment that guests may have to a tangible map. At Killington, which decreased its winter map order by 30 percent last winter and jettisoned printed summer trail maps altogether, “We would ultimately like to eliminate the winter printed maps, too, but the pushback has been pretty strong — a lot of people prefer the paper map,” said Kristel Killary, a spokeswoman.

Independently owned Sunlight Mountain Resort in Colorado, where relatively low-priced lift tickets and a laid back vibe are the norm, is currently having an artist paint its new trail map for print, a reflection of the ski area’s brand identity as “old school.” As the spokesman Troy Hawks explained, “many of our guests like a map as a souvenir in addition to finding their way on the mountain. We want to preserve trail maps.”

At Schweitzer, too, even though skiers are increasingly turning to the resort app for information, many of them also like having a printed map in their pocket, said the spokeswoman Dig Chrismer. A lifelong skier, Ms. Chrismer acknowledged the ties of tradition: “Maybe it’s nostalgia, but there’s just something to having a map out on the chairlift, plotting your next run.”

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