My skiing website: Mountain Reviews

[RachelV]

So I have this skiing website that I currently work on as a hobby -- MountainReviews.com. I just finished a big redesign/rewrite and I was wondering what you guys all thought. My real-life skiing friends are getting sick of me asking them to look at it, and I'd love to get feedback from people who I know love to ski *and* visit skiing websites.

Really, I'd appreciate any thoughts whatsoever that you have about it. It is easy to get around? Does anything just not make sense or look dumb? Are there any other features you'd like to see? Things that are coming soon include weather, maps and directions, and member profiles where you can list all the mountains you've skiied at whether you've reviewed them or not.

So that's really it. Let me know what you think -- I've spent so much time working on it over the past few months that I feel like I've lost all perspective. Thanks in advance to anyone who takes 5 min to check it out. :D

 

[ski diva]

Very nice site, Rachel. And a great idea, too. I love the reviews. I love the lists of similar and nearby mountains. I love the photos. And I like how you link to the ski area websites.

In the "For What It's Worth Department," just a couple comments (it's always easy for someone else to make suggestions, isn't it? :D ):

First: it might be nice to have a drop down menu of the states to choose from. Might make browsing a little easier and provide a nice alternative to the map.

Second: I'm not sure what you mean by "similar mountains." Do you mean similarly-rated mountains? I only ask this because Okemo came up as similar to Big Sky. I mean, I love Okemo, but.....

And third: I like how you have the bar showing the percentages of beginner, intermediate, and expert terrain. Maybe you could add some additional stats for each area? Like skiable acres, vertical feet, that sort of thing.

Rachel, you're to be congratulated for what seems like a tremendous amount of work. Looks like a terrific resource for all of us.

 

[RachelV]

Aw, thanks, you're too kind. :o

...it might be nice to have a drop down menu of the states to choose from. Might make browsing a little easier and provide a nice alternative to the map.

Yeah, I agree. That's coming, I'm just trying to figure out the best way to make drilling down easier without cluttering up the browse page.

I'm not sure what you mean by "similar mountains." Do you mean similarly-rated mountains? I only ask this because Okemo came up as similar to Big Sky. I mean, I love Okemo, but.....

Heh, I know. Right now "similar" just means it has a similar difficulty rating and a similar overall rating, and since most of the mountains don't have many ratings yet this can get kind of inaccurate. I guess I should work region/state in there somehow and favor mountains that are closer until the ratings data gets better.

I like how you have the bar showing the percentages of beginner, intermediate, and expert terrain. Maybe you could add some additional stats for each area? Like skiable acres, vertical feet, that sort of thing.

This is also something I've been thinking about. Honestly the #1 reason I haven't yet is that I enter the data by hand, and it's really tedious. I also want to stay away from just having big tables full of numbers... one of the reasons I picked the trail percentages is that I could think of a clear, easy way to show it graphically, with the bar. I've been trying to come up with a way to do the same for vertical feet or acreage, something to give a general idea of the size of the mountain.

Thanks so much for checking it out.

 

[abc]

OK, I confess not spending even 5 min. on it. So take what I say with a grain of salt. ;)

First, I think it's quite nice to have a site that puts it all together. Your site is quite professional looking, which is a great start.

Now, the nickpicking:

I don't quite get what the "Difficulty" means. You already have the percentage of different trails right there. Seems redundent.

Instead of "Similar" resort, how about just "list other resort you've skied"? That gives a bench mark of what "difficult" means if someone's only been to one other resort, or has been to Whistler!

Now I'm pulling the following out of a hat! ;) How about having the reviewer choose amoungst the "easy/inter/advance" which they ski the most?

I second Diva's suggestion: size matters. ;)

I must say as a long time skier, I've gotten used to just asking opinions and comparisons. So I'm not sure how this "review" site will work for that purpose. But done properly, it should be useful for those who're just starting out traveling in choosing where to go...

 

[liquidfeet]

Great site! I've just posted three reviews. Thanks for making this happen.

 

[RachelV]

I don't quite get what the "Difficulty" means. You already have the percentage of different trails right there. Seems redundent.

I don't think they're redundant... take Snowbird and Mt. Southington (CT), for example. They both have roughly 1/3 each of beginner, intermediate, and advanced trails, but Snowbird is *definitely* a much harder mountain than Mt. Southington... a lot of people would agree that Snowbird is more difficult than most mountains.

I do agree that it's weird to have that one arbitrary mountain stat - trail percentages - in the same place as the ratings. I'm thinking of making a dedicated page that would have just mountain stats... trails, vertical, acreage, etc. That would take care of indicating size, too.

I've just posted three reviews.

Yay, thanks! They're great reviews. :D

 

[ISki]

The "Mountains Nearby" feature is fab! Very helpful.