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« Previous Story | The Industry Report Home Page | Next Story » Spy Technology Arrives on the MountainBy J.D. O'Connor 
Theremin was intent on building a covert listening device, not a FastTrack card or all-mountain lift pass, but his work with Radio Frequency Identification Devices (RFID), paved the way for a host of new whizzbangs already in use on your mountain or surely coming to it soon. An RFID tag is a small wafer of silicon chips and antennas capable of receiving and responding to radio-frequency queries from an RFID transceiver. They're small, lightweight, and they have been used in all manner of applications: from tracking livestock and inventory control to finding misplaced rental skis and wayward guests. "We hope to have RFID technology in place in our terrain park next season," Heath Nielsen Vice President of Commercial Properties and Operations for Booth Creek Resorts said recently during a tour of Booth Creek's Northstar-at-Tahoe location. Willing guests wearing one of the little transponders in the terrain park will trigger strategically mounted cameras positioned to capture their biggest air and best tricks. "They'll be able to see their pictures at a central kiosk and choose the pictures they want printed," Nielsen said. Still relatively new in its latest iteration, RFID technology is already a $20 billion industry with military as well as corporate applications. The little tags are already in use at several European resorts and a scattered few North American resorts - including Solitude in Utah and Steamboat Ski Area in Colorado, where they have been in place for two years. At Steamboat, guests wearing a MountainWatch RFID need only wave it in front of a centrally located mountain kiosk to pinpoint the location of a lost child and get updated snow conditions. At Solitude, use of RFID lift access technology has been credited with shortening lift lines and enhancing customer's mountain experience. « Previous Story | The Industry Report Home Page | Next Story » |
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