Help skiers decide
Ski Trip Planning Checklist Using Global Ski Atlas
Drive time, a mapped hill, pass tags, and what to confirm before you leave.
Pick a hill on the map first. Then check drive time. Then check whether the parquet row even looks like the hill you think you booked. This checklist is that order. The map on the right is Montage Mountain, OSM way 45096232, already tagged Indy in pass-affiliations.json. If you can read the lifts and the greens from this view, you have enough to pack. If you cannot, the OSM object is incomplete and the atlas will not invent the rest.
Montage, Pennsylvania. Same wiki winter stack as the tagging guide.
Step 1. Drive, then snow
Open Drive Time from a start you actually use. A three-hour Saturday is a different object than a flight to Denver. New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts fill the Northeast cluster. You do not need a destination pass to ski here. You need a car and a hill that is open. The points are downhill rows, not hotel clusters.
Northeast downhill points. Independents sit next to the famous names.
Step 2. Read the mix, not the slogan
Bristol Mountain, way 320434895, is the worked example in the pipeline post. The bars are trails_novice through trails_expert on that row. If you are bringing first-timers, look at easy and novice. If those bars are empty and the map is all black, pick another hill. Do not recap brochure vertical here. The file already has a trail mix. Use it.
Bristol difficulty counts from the current parquet.
Step 3. Pass tags are a overlay, not the inventory
This file tags 0 Indy, 0 Epic, and 0 Ikon matches from the 2026–27 Storm Skiing workbook. The rest of the 3,035 downhill rows have no pass in that JSON. A trip plan that only lists pass partners leaves most of the map blank. Check the pass after the hill, not before.
data/pass-affiliations.json matched onto atlas ids.
Step 4. Confirm the object, then buy the ticket
Before you pay: the OSM name, the trail count, and the live map should match the hill on the ticket site. Chapman Hill in Durango is four greens and two lifts. If a listing promised forty runs, you have the wrong row. Open Trip Planner for a multi-stop day. Then check hours, parking, and whether the carpet is running. The atlas does not know the rope is iced up this morning.
Chapman Hill. Four tagged downhill trails. Still a Saturday.