Nordic Pulse is an app based cross country ski trail grooming report system, bringing trail condition reports from ski areas across North America together on one platform, and streamlining grooming reporting for ski areas.
Nordic Pulse was born out of a desire to make grooming reports easier to find for skiers and to help clubs share their trail conditions. We believe strongly that deciding where and when to ski should be a quick, easy, and fun experience. After years of wading through outdated websites, online spreadsheets, snow phones (though we do love a good snow phone message!), user-reported blogs, and the like, it was time to create a new platform.
The team at Nordic Pulse is proud to be working with ski areas of all sizes. From tiny volunteer clubs to some of the largest nordic ski operations on the planet, we're on a mission to revolutionize trail reporting and help skiers get out on the trails.
Canada, USA, France, Italy and counting 🚀
Nordic Pulse's objective is to make grooming reporting easier for ski areas. Grooming teams work long nights preparing the corduroy for the coming day's skiers, and the last thing the groomers want to do at the end of a long shift is to fiddle around with logging into a website or updating a spreadsheet with cold fingers.
With Nordic Pulse, grooming teams simply enable the in-app GPS tracker while they groom and the app syncs the data to our server every few seconds. With both AutoSync and offline storage capacity, Nordic Pulse is optimized to work in a variety of scenarios such as sending real-time data through cellular data, bulk uploading whenever the snowcat passes through the stadium and briefly connects to the club's wifi connection, or operating fully offline and out of service.
As the data syncs to the cloud, our algorithm accurately processes the GPS data points, marking each trail with the precise date and time that it was last groomed. Once a trail has been marked as groomed, the timestamp will continue to update each time the groomer passes over it again.
At the end of the grooming shift, all that's needed is to write up a quick message in the in-app reporting tool, and click Publish. For ski areas who are working off-line or out of service, groomers can simply return to a wifi, cellular or satellite connections, press Sync, and the trails will be marked at the time they were actually groomed.
If I were to design the perfect grooming app, it would be nearly identical to Nordic Pulse.
I love how Nordic Pulse is designed to operate entirely in the background when I’m out grooming and focused on my work. After grooming, I can provide as much or as little text in my report as needed, with or without photos, and can choose to provide more trail information than anyone really needs.
Our trail system was especially dynamic this year to accommodate logging, yet I was able to easily communicate trail and access changes via the app. Next year we’re hoping to better utilize the snow depth reporting features.
I love the app and all the feedback from the Nordic community that I hear is overwhelmingly positive.
I truly think this app has been a real game changer . In years past we’ve struggled with a myriad of different issues, including internet connectivity, network/server errors, mapping systems to help new operators who are learning the trails. This app addresses so many issues and is helpful in so many ways.
At first, I wasn’t pumped about being tracked on the Mountain, but it’s proven itself invaluable countless times. Our radios up here are wholly inadequate and more often than not, our night shift road operators have tried to radio me, but I can't be reached, or the transmissions are garbled, at least with this app they can determine whether I’m still moving or am stopped and may need to send help.
Also, I love the ability to access the app from anywhere and adapt to changing conditions or update stuff I may have forgotten. A perfect example of this after my shift a few times the road was dangerously slick coming off the Mountain, and with this app, I was able to log back on and edit my grooming report to include potential road hazards.
It’s a tremendously valuable app from an operator standpoint . I think above all other things, this app has saved me probably 30-40 minutes a night, which allows me to get even more trails done and get a better product for the skiers.
Dear Julien,
Just a quick note to compliment you on the successful launch of your wonderful program Nordic Pulse. We did not know what to expect when we started beta testing earlier this year, but were quickly blown away by your professionalism and attention to detail. The program is very easy to implement and navigate, and we had zero issues with getting all of our groomers up and running with it.
Of particular note is your dedication to making the program the best in the business. We loved the ability to collaborate with you to optimize the program for our particular needs.
The number of hits to your website is testament to the importance of your site to the cross country skiing universe.
Thanks again, and best of luck with the upcoming season!
Regards,
Working with Nordic Pulse on the delivery of our new trail reporting product has been exceptional.
With a mid-season rollout, we were able to adapt and embed the new platform into our website easily with a very user-friendly interface. Training for our grooming team was effective and easy with the simple-to-use mobile upload report.
We highly recommend Nordic Pulse for your grooming report and data collection needs.
Nelson Nordic was one of the first clubs to test Nordic Pulse.
From the first test to full adoption of the system it has performed flawlessly. Our groomers are all agreed that in ease of use, accuracy, and reliability it far exceeds previous apps we have used.
Trail reports are uploaded during grooming so our members know which trails are ready and when they were groomed before they even step out of bed. Any updates or notes on conditions are easily added when necessary.
The future of Nordic grooming reports is here!
Nordic Pulse makes our Trail reporting much easier.
With basically just turning on the tracking on Nordic Pulse, our ski report updates automatically and it's done precisely. It is also easy to communicate to skiers about trail closures and other emergencies.
The app is also very valuable for groomers since we can always locate groomer at the exact location if there is a problem.
Nordic Pulse customer service is exceptional with problems being solved within minutes since find out.
The Cariboo Ski Touring Club has been looking for several years at systems to allow electronic transfer of grooming information to the club website. Up until this year the systems available were well beyond our budget.
Once we were made aware of the startup of Nordic-Pulse in February of 2021 we looked at the system and saw that it would be able to do everything we required in a grooming reporting system at a price that was, frankly, a bargain compared with anything else on the market.
We signed up initially on a trial basis and the response from the Nordic-Pulse team was amazing. They had our trail data into their system in about a week and we were able to use it for grooming reporting in the last part of our season in March 2021. The response from the club membership was overwhelmingly in favor. The ability to see on-line what was groomed and when before driving out to the trails was a boon for late season skiing. We subscribed for the full system and continued to work with the Nordic-Pulse team to fine tune our trail system information and to implement the upgrades they were developing as we went along.
We are looking forward to the next season with Nordic-Pulse and the release of the apps for IOS and Android devices. The support from the Nordic-Pulse team so far can only be described as superb.
Kimberley Nordic Club has been looking for a modern and reliable way to report our grooming data to the public.
During the 2020-21 ski season, our grooming staff tested the Nordic Pulse system and worked with Julien to be well prepared to transition to this system for our grooming reports. Nordic Pulse is likely to become the new standard for nordic grooming reports and we appreciate the opportunity to be part of this exciting development.
We are signed up for next season and looking forward to snow!”
Nordic Pulse was designed and developed by Julien Locke, a member of the Canadian National Ski Team from 2016-2020, and is run by a small team of dedicated skiers across Canada.
The vision for Nordic Pulse began in 2015. During a website overhaul of the Sovereign Lake Nordic Centre website, Julien began dreaming up and developing a user-friendly, quick and simple trail editor for the Sovereign Lake grooming report. While the tool served it's purpose and has been used with success at several ski areas in the past 6 years, Julien's interest was captivated by the idea of making reports easier for grooming teams and more accessible for skiers. Fast forward to the fall of 2020, and after much planning, the development of Nordic Pulse began.
Nordic Pulse was officially launched in February 2021 and has seen a rapid growth across North America. In the first three years online, nordic-pulse.com has been viewed over 5 million times by over 700 000+ skiers, and our grooming apps are being used by 800+ groomers at 280+ trail networks.