TraiLink at Whistler Blackcomb | Off-Grid Group Tracking from 7th Heaven to the Glades

In mid February, my buddies and I spent a week at Whistler Blackcomb. To help keep everyone connected on the mountain we each carried a TraiLink Go tracker. The terrain at Whistler is perfect to push the TraiLink Mesh to it's limits with sharp rock faces, dense snow covered trees, and the alpine pushing an elevation of 8,000 feet. 

Group photo at the Whistler peak 

Six skiers on one map

Whistler Blackcomb is the largest resort in North America, a bit over 8,000 acres across two mountains. A group of six does not stay a group of six on terrain like that. Somebody stops for photos, two people peel off for bumps, somebody's legs are done by 2 p.m., and suddenly you are standing at a trail junction typing "where r u" with a glove in your teeth.

With a TraiLink on every group member, "where is everyone" stopped being a text thread. Open the app and all six of us are live markers on the map, updating over the mesh whether the phones have cellular reception or not. Regrouping went from a negotiation to a glance.

Adventure replay in the TraiLink app from the top of 7th Heaven. 4 of us with our tracks on the map.

One of my favorite runs at Whistler is Cloud Nine. Since Whistler is such a large mountain someone would loose connection behind in the glades or stop for a photo and the app would give us a notification that they've lost connection on the mesh. We could still see their last known location, speed, and direction so we had a general idea of where they were and once back in range they seamlessly reconnect.

First run down Cloud Nine  

Up to the bowl

Later in the week we pushed all the way up to the bowl on Blackcomb, and this is the terrain we were really waiting for. Up there the crowds thin out, the runs stop being runs, and cell service goes to zero. Not one bar. Zero.

Which changes nothing for the mesh. TraiLink never used the towers, so it doesn't notice when they are gone. The radios talk directly to each other, every unit relays for the rest of the group, and the map keeps updating.

We also recently shipped route replay in the app, so at the end of the day you can play everything back and watch the whole group's lines redraw themselves across the mountain. It is a genuinely fun way to relive the day, and a dangerously effective way to settle arguments about who actually skied more.

Route replay of our tracks in the bowl. Zero bars on every phone in the group but stayed connected with the TraiLinks. 

The sign at the gate

On the way up you pass a sign that does not mince words: you are heading into avalanche terrain. Beside it is a map of the zone and a transceiver check station, and the expectation is that you ride past it with a transceiver on your body, a probe and shovel in your pack, and the training to use all three.Avalanche terrain map and transceiver check station.

Let us be direct about this, because it matters: TraiLink is not an avalanche transceiver, and we will never market it as one. A transceiver has exactly one job, finding a buried partner at close range in the worst minutes of your life. Nothing we build replaces that gear, that partner, or that training.

What a transceiver does not do is tell you where your group is the rest of the day. Its range is measured in tens of metres, and it only matters after something has already gone wrong. TraiLink is the layer for everything before that: live positions and messaging for the whole group, kilometres apart, with no infrastructure at all. Different job. Worn together.

Quick break half way down the glacier 

Two in the trees, one on the run

Here is where it stopped being theoretical.

Tom and I ducked off the main line into the glades. Jacob stayed on the marked run, planning to meet us below. The trees held the best snow of the trip, right up until they funnelled us to a river we had to cross. Picking a safe way over took real time. Long enough that on any other trip, the guy waiting below has two missing friends, no cell service, and no way to know whether we had a problem or were just being slow.

Crossing the river 

Instead, he watched the whole thing on his map. He'd actually sent a message over the TraiLink app to let us know about the river. Then he watch us working along the bank. He knew we were fine, he knew roughly where we would pop out, and if anything had actually gone sideways, a message over the mesh was one tap away in either direction.

When we finally rejoined him, the first thing he wanted to talk about was not the snow. It was the map. What got him was realizing that with zero service up there, there was simply no other way for the three of us to stay connected.

No tower, no satellite, no signal of any kind, and the group still shared one live picture of where everyone was. That moment is the product.

The hardware

The units themselves mostly disappeared into the trip, which is the goal. Mine rode clipped to my jacket through six days of chairlift bars, snow, and cold. Clip it on in the morning, forget about it, check the map when it matters.Where my TraiLink lived all week.

Last chair

Thanks to my buddies who let me clip trackers to them for a week and put up with me screenshotting the map before heading out.

If your crew rides somewhere the cell service ends, whether that is the resort alpine, the sled trails, or the bush, this is exactly what we build for. And if you want a closer look at route replay or the trip tracks, get in touch. We are always happy to nerd out.