What a wait means
A wait is the time from joining a lift line to getting on the chair, in whole minutes. For each hour, it is the median for riders who join the line during that hour: half wait less, half wait more.
Where it comes from
Snowcat runs a simulation of the whole mountain. Simulated riders move over a map of the runs and lifts in 15-second steps, and lines form at each lift from how many riders it can carry. Through the day, head counts from resort webcams pull the simulated crowd toward what the cameras see. The minutes always come from the simulation; a camera never reports minutes directly.
Each lift has an hour-by-hour curve for the day. The day’s curve is written shortly before the lifts open, then corrected every 5 minutes while they run.
The current wait
Free The number on a lift’s card is the current hour’s point on today’s corrected curve. It shows only when the curve was corrected within the last 60 minutes and the lift’s status is current. Snowcat never shows the next hour’s estimate as the current wait, and never uses another day’s curve.
A stopped or closed lift shows no wait. When there is nothing current to show, the card says “No current wait estimate”.
| Word on the card | Wait |
|---|---|
| No Wait | 5 min or less |
| Light | 6 to 15 min |
| Moderate | 16 to 30 min |
| Heavy | More than 30 min |
Every wait is labeled Estimated or Forecast. Snowcat shows a single number, not a range.
The hourly curve and best hour
Pro With Pro, each lift and the resort as a whole show the full hourly curve and the next few hours, hour by hour. The best hour to ride is the hour with the lowest estimated wait. It is hidden on a wind hold, on a day with no real peak, and after close.
How fresh it is
| What | Shown as live | Marked out of date |
|---|---|---|
| Lift status and current waits | Updated in the last 30 minutes | After 90 minutes: “Status not current” |
| Conditions | Updated in the last 90 minutes | After 6 hours |
| Today’s forecast | Never shown as live | After 24 hours |
| Crowd outlook | Never shown as live | After 36 hours |
The app says how old a number is, such as “Updated just now”, “Updated 12 min ago” or “May be outdated”.
Lift status
Snowcat reads each resort’s lift status every 15 minutes while it is open, every 5 minutes around first chair, and every hour after close. The status words come from the resort: Open, Closed, Wind hold, Weather may delay, Avalanche control and Opening within 30 min.
When the resort’s report doesn’t say why a lift isn’t running, Snowcat can infer it from the pattern of reports: Late start, Unexpected delay, Not spinning yet, Stopped, Not opening today and Opened late. An inferred status is dropped after 30 minutes.
When a lift is on hold, the lift page can say “Expected to reopen around 11:30 AM” or “Unlikely to reopen today”, based on how holds like it have gone before. It shows only when the estimate is confident.
Reporting a wait
Tap “Report wait time” on a lift’s page to send the minutes you waited, the people in line, or that the lift is stopped.
- Your report carries no location. Snowcat doesn’t check that you are at the lift.
- You can send one report per lift every 15 minutes. After that the sheet says “Already reported recently”.
- A report nudges that lift’s current-hour estimate. Its weight fades to nothing over 30 minutes.
- “Too high” pulls the estimate toward two thirds of its value, and “Too low” toward one and a half times.
The app doesn’t tell you when your report changed a number.
Cameras
Some lifts have a resort webcam on their line. The Cameras screen shows each camera and the lifts it covers. A wait card doesn’t say whether a camera fed that lift’s number. Every wait is still an estimate from the simulation.
How accurate it is
The current forecast has not been scored yet this season. Scoring starts once the launch resorts open, and the Trust Center will show it. When it is scored, Snowcat will publish, on the AI page of the Trust Center:
- the error and the bias of the waits, by resort, by lift and by how far ahead
- how many lift-hours each figure rests on
- how much came from camera-corrected hours and how much from the model alone
- a comparison with a usual-day baseline
The crowd outlook
The Plan tab scores each coming day from 1 to 10. The score ranks the day against that mountain’s own season: a 7 is busier than seven days in ten at that mountain. Scores don’t compare one mountain with another. It is built from the resort’s hours, the type of day, the weather forecast, known events and a demand model.
Confidence is High up to 3 days out, Medium for 4 to 7 days and Low for 8 to 13 days. Free shows the next 3 days and Pro shows 14.