I have to agree with John Gruber that the Ski Lodge app from the iPhone/iPod app store looks absolutely gorgeous. Its graphics and quick overview of snow conditions are by far the best of the ski report apps I’ve seen on the app store.

Unlike Gruber however, I snowboard, and there’s stuff lacking from these apps that make them less than useful for me.

A three day weather forecast would be a useful start. I normally plan my trip at least one day in advance, and the current conditions usually aren’t enough to help me decide.

Another thing is the trail maps. This isn’t a critique of ski info apps but more of the ski resort sites. It becomes more apparent however, when the trail map link in the app links to a huge PDF. In the case of British Columbia’s Whistler/Blackcomb for example, the PDF is over 8MB and is taxing even for newer computers, let alone the iPod.

So far, these apps are cool, I have them all installed and check them out, but there hasn’t been a single day I’ve gone snowboarding based on the report in the application alone. I always reach for the web site. So I hope they’re able to put more info in there in the next version, in the same beautiful style that Ski Lodge already has. Ski Lodge