Contact CU Independent Winter Reporter Julia Spadaro at julia.spadaro@colorado.edu
A new Colorado-based app, SkiTownConnect, helps mountain lovers connect with others based on recreational interests such as skiing, snowboarding, camping, dirt biking, fishing, hiking and even partying.
The app’s creator, Jim Fleischer, was inspired to create SkiTownConnect by past experiences with a variety of popular apps. He believes many of these apps don’t fit mountain communities particularly well.
“I felt there should be an app that caters to the recreational lifestyle that abounds here in the mountains and thought that my experiences living in the mountains for the past 14 years gave me some insight as to what the market here was craving,” said Fleischer.
This idea was originally going to be a dating app for the mountain communities, but Fleischer recognized the bigger picture.
“I felt there was a larger demographic of people that wanted to connect on a recreational level with others in the mountains, but didn’t have a good method of finding those people,” he said. “Thus, SkiTownConnect was born and development of the idea commenced.”
The app officially launched in Summit County in the middle of December. Since then, it
has had over 500 downloads and very positive feedback.
“People have stopped me on the slopes in Vail and have thanked me for giving them the tools to find people to go and do fun things with,” Fleischer said.
In the future, he hopes to expand availability of the app into additional markets such as Lake Tahoe and Salt Lake City resorts. Fleischer eventually wants to conquer connectivity all the way to California. For now, he will settle for Colorado and all it has to offer.
“Overall, I’d like to break down the barriers to meeting people,” Fleischer said, “getting together,and doing the things people come to the mountains for in the first place.”
SkiTownConnect is a fairly accesable app. Just download the free app through the Apple App Store or the Google Play, create a profile with your photo, input what you like to do, then start to search for people to hang out with or events to participate in. After that, it’s just a matter of finding like-minded mountain lovers and getting outdoors.
