GIS is an excellent tool for teaching spatial concepts while focusing on interesting topics in real places. There are plenty of interesting topics in real places. One example is to investigate the spatial pattern of ski areas. Ski areas, by their very nature, are spatial phenomena. Their existence depends upon global, regional, and often very localized weather patterns. The skill level required and excitement of different ski runs is due to the local terrain. Most ski areas have turned into year-round resorts, spawning development and changing the local economy and even the economies of entire regions. Although many are on national forest leased land, the habitat, vegetation, soils, and drainage have been altered in what oftentimes are fragile mountain ecosystems. Ski areas, like golf courses and other large land areas used for recreation, have their proponents and opponents, and discussing them makes for excellent debates in geography classes.

I created the map of ski areas in Colorado shown below in ArcGIS from public domain data sources. The shaded relief is a 200 meter-resolution image from http://nationalatlas.gov, clipped to the state of Colorado, with highways from the Colorado Department of Transportation (http://www.dot.state.co.us), rivers from the Colorado Division of Water Resources (http://water.state.co.us), counties from ArcLessons (http://www.esri.com/arclessons), and ski areas from the US Forest Service (http://roadless.fs.fed.us/documents/colorado_roadless/gis_info.shtml). I projected all data sets into the projection of the shaded relief image, Lambert Azimuthal Equal Area. I created annotation for the ski area labels so that I could move the labels off of the ski area boundaries for increased flexibility and legibility. The data and lesson reside on ArcLessons: http://edcommunity.esri.com/arclessons/search_results.cfm?id=397

Why do the ski areas across Colorado have their specific spatial pattern? What factors are important considerations in the location of ski areas? How many of those factors have a geographic component?

Zoom to Arapahoe Basin, where “The East Wall” offers the highest skiable terrain in Colorado. The resort is often open until early June. How far are these ski areas from the continental divide? Buffer the continental divide by 50 miles. How many of the Colorado ski areas are within or partly within this 50 mile buffer? Why?

--Joseph Kerski, Education Manager.