It was conversation you would only hear at the Banff Festival of Mountain Films, the annual gathering of the tribe of real and wannabe adventurers: “Our new site has GPS waypoints for all these cool B.C. trails.”

“Great, I’m really interested in using collaborative computing to combat global warming.”

While it sounds like they were speaking at cross purposes, Kurt Turchan, founder of the Trailpeak website, and Chris Joseph of Melting Mountains found common ground around the computers at the festival. Outdoorsy conversations that used to happen over a cappuccino, a beer or a can of Red Bull are increasingly taking place in front of computer screens.

Technology has moved into outdoor recreation in a big way – and in amazingly small ways.

Photo courtesy of Mountain Festivals/The Banff Centre
Climber Will Gadd says sponsoring companies help people such as him make their films.

Just a few weeks ago, Suunto brought out its “GPS in a watch” aimed at hikers, skiers and people who lose their cars a lot in parking lots. You can imagine the oohs and aahs from gadget freaks. Founded in 1936 by the Finnish inventor of the liquid-filled compass, Suunto now makes very sophisticated and expensive sports instruments. You can get a dive computer that knows more about diving than you do, and specialized wristop computers for everything from golf to long-distance running to sea navigation.

The star of the show this year was the Suunto X9, which combines a compass, altimeter, barometer and GPS unit. (It also tells time.) The X9 will, according to Suunto, “take you through even the toughest situations.” Seeing desire fill my eyes, the representative manning Suunto’s booth said all I needed was to take $850 down to a place such as Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC), and I, too, could own the coolest wristwatch on the planet.

Tammy Stevenson, a customer service rep at Calgary’s GPS Central store, says that more and more people are buying these units for pleasure.

“I’d estimate about 65 per cent of our sales are personal use, with about 30-35 per cent being for outdoors applications,” she says. The remainder of the gear goes to folks who don’t want to get lost while driving.

Stevenson says you can get a good GPS receiver for under $200, and they even have an entry-level, wrist-mounted one for $124.95. It’s not as sleek as the Suunto, but will do the job for most people.

Once you have your GPS, you can start using the advanced features of Kurt Turchan’s Trailpeak.com site, which bills itself as “Canada’s largest free trail database.” A search for cross-country ski trails near Calgary turns up a nice selection. There’s the easy in-town Glenmore Reservoir and the more challenging Powderface/Prairie Creek loop near Bragg Creek. There’s also a good tutorial on using your GPS in the outdoors.

Unlike some “blogger” type sites, the information here is reviewed by editors, so the junk gets filtered out. There are near guidebook-quality trail descriptions, nice maps and photos, and GPS data. To get at it, you have to upload some of your own GPS-keyed info, so it’s kind of a co- operative venture.

Maybe that’s why MEC has come on board as a sponsor of Trailpeak. Selena McLachlan, MEC’s Vancouver-based marketing manager, says they’ve contributed some money to get the site up and running.

“We hope that by aligning our members with this resource, it will help them get out there and pursue outdoor exploration,” she says.

McLachlan likes the availability of GPS data and notes that the site “has a lot of breadth; there are advanced trails, novice trails, something for everybody. I really like the way it’s categorized into Water, Earth and Snow.”

Kurt Turchan is optimistic about his site’s future, and says he has appointed editors for various parts of the country. However, McLachlan says she thinks it’s going to be challenging for him to build and maintain the site, like any site that relies on advertising.

Which brings us to a multi-million dollar question that was addressed at this year’s Banff Mountain Film Festival. “Is it ethical for elite outdoor athletes to turn themselves into vertical billboards?”

Product placement is showing up everywhere in outdoor films, websites and even summit photos. Filmmaker Leo Dickinson, who has ballooned over Mount Everest and done freefall with peregrine falcons, feels it’s acceptable to display logos if the product has something to do with the sport. (His parachute has “Dagger” on it.) However, “had I used a balloon with Coca-Cola on it, I would have killed my chances of selling my film to the BBC,” says Dickinson.

Canmore-based climber Will Gadd says he’ll take money wherever he can get it, and the more the merrier. He’s currently sponsored by the Red Bull energy drink. (Some people believe a can of that stuff is an authentic piece of climbing equipment.)

Gadd’s contract calls for him to be wearing the Red Bull trademark whenever he’s in the public eye, but he says he doubts people will see his hat and run like zombies to the supermarket.

“Companies like Red Bull allow me to make films and do things like going climbing 300 days a year,” he told the festival audience.

There’s no question that getting “product placement” – especially in feature films – can work wonders for a company. A representative from Vancouver-based Arcteryx Equipment Inc. says that it got tremendous value for the $24,000 worth of free product it supplied to the mediocre Hollywood cliffhanger Vertical Limit, if only because people learned how to pronounce their company name.

Lest you conclude that the Banff Festival of Mountain Films has become all about product placement and $850 wristwatches, for every corporate type there are many, many people there for the love of the mountains.

Which brings us to MeltingMountains.com, an initiative of the Alpine Club of Canada. Glaciers are melting, treelines are rising, and some predict that in 50 years or so the Bow River will be just a muddy creek.

Adventurer Reinhold Messner has signed on as the group’s spokesperson. He says, “From the changes I have seen, it’s clear that climate change is a huge threat to the mountains. We need to act now and protect them for the future.”

A few days of armchair adventure at this festival would make anyone agree with him.

Web watch:
www.banffmountainfestivals.com
www.suunto.com
www.gpscentral.ca

(Tom Keenan is a professor at the University of Calgary and an expert on technology and its social implications. He can be reached at keenan@businessedge.ca)

Climber Will Gadd says sponsoring companies help people such as him make their films.