Ski to the moon with Snowcamp
Youth charity Snow-Camp have launched an innovative way to harness our love of a challenge on the slopes, combined with technology that can now keep track of our turns on the mountain, to launch a new fundraising event – The Ski 2 the Moon Challenge. All of us here at Basecamp are proud to be supporting this campaign and have already started to clock up the miles. Bring on the moon.
Unlike the various fund raising efforts in the Alps each winter staged by Snow- Camp and other charities, it doesn’t matter whether you are in Breckenridge, Borovets or Bromley, you can take part in the Ski 2 the Moon Challenge anytime and anywhere during the coming season – just by downloading the app.
The idea is that wherever you’re skiing or boarding, every mile you clock up is tracked by the app, and then combined with everybody else’s in pursuit of our target, The Moon – 240,000 miles away.
“We were inspired by the success of Movember – that wherever you are in the world you can grow a moustache, raise some funds and support a charity. We wanted to do something along the same lines, but with snowsports – and the app now makes this possible,” said Snow-Camp Director, Dan Charlish.
The app is free to download and available to everyone with a smart phone – Android or IOS. Importantly, it will also be free to use when you are skiing, as it does not require data roaming to operate.
The concept is simple. You download the app before you go skiing, you set your own personal ski target in miles and the timeframe you are giving yourself to achieve this distance. When you want to start your challenge, you hit go and the app starts to track your skiing or snowboarding – and your miles start helping towards the collective goal of the reaching the Moon.
Snow-Camp were able to develop the Ski 2 the Moon idea after approaching Core Coders, the developers of the popular Ski Tracks app, now used by over 1.4 million skiers and snowboarders.
“I use Ski Tracks a lot,” said Charlish, “…so we wrote to the developers, explained the idea, and asked them if it was possible to deliver an app utlising their GPS tracking technology. They wrote back the same day, they loved the concept and their office happened to be 5 minutes down the road from Snow-Camp! They could have been anywhere in the world – we started thinking this was meant to be.’
Being powered by Ski Tracks, the Ski 2 the Moon app will provide participants with the very best Ski Tracks features in terms of measuring your speed, total distance, vertical drop and GPS tracking which maps your route on Google maps.
It will also be fun with cartoon characters named after Olympians Jenny Jones (a lady hare) and James Woods (a cool tortoise) which pop up at various times during your challenge, encouraging you to keep going, congratulating you on reaching milestones towards your target or awarding various other achievements.
Snow-Camp Patron and Olympic Bronze medalist Jenny Jones said, “It’s such a great concept and is so accessible to everyone – I’m really looking forward to supporting the event, getting people using the app and helping us reach the Moon! “
And growing up I was always being called an energiser bunny so I’m delighted to have Jenny the Hare named after me!’
Other graphics within the App enable participants to see their own personal contribution towards the moon target and also the live ongoing progress of the whole event as each combined mile skied by all participants is shown on a ‘totalizer’ screen alongside an animated rocket making its way to the Moon.
Of course everything is easily sharable across all social media, helping spread awareness to other snowsports enthusiasts.
The App is free, but as a charity event users will be encouraged to share a prepopulated Just Giving page detailing their personal Ski 2 the Moon challenge, which they can easily share with friends and family. There will also be simple ways to support the event and charity through text giving, with all funds raised supporting Snow-Camp’s work with inner city young people.
“What I like about the idea is it can engage everyone who ski’s or snowboards, whatever their level’ says Charlish. ‘If you are out in Les 2 Alpes for a week with your mates – set a 200 mile target and do it over a week. If you are spending a day at Chatham Snow Centre – go for 10 miles in a day. If you are doing a season in Whistler – set a target of 3,000 miles skiing and a timeframe of the whole season. But the key is the event brings everyone together to achieve one shared goal – and we hope the snowsports community will get behind the idea.”
The event began on the 20th December 2014 and will continue until the end of the season – or until we reach the Moon!
To support the Ski 2 The Moon event and Snow-Camp’s work you can donate at: www.justgiving.com/snowcamp
You can also text MOON20 £1 (or £2, £3, £5 or £10 depending on the amount you wish to donate) to 70070 to make an instant donation.
