What If Your Phone Could Detect an Avalanche, Then Call for Help?

In the dispatch center at California’s Palisades Tahoe on a late-season storm day at the end of April, the phone is ringing with demands and updates.

A skier is stuck in a creek off Solitude Chair; Mainline Pocket is being opened to the public; and patrol is finishing up their morning avalanche control work. Eleven patrollers are still on routes at 9:35 a.m. The dispatcher behind the desk, a multitasking wizard named Elise Whittall, responds to urgent calls with complete composure.

A map of the ski resort on Whittall’s computer is running a program called Got-U, which uses GPS data on the ski patrollers’ phones to show the real-time location of every patroller on duty. Right now, it’s showing 11 red dots with each patroller’s name as they move around the mountain. That mapping ability adds data and nuance to mountain operations, for sure, but that alone isn’t groundbreaking.

Here’s what is: Got-U’s patent-pending algorithm uses the inertial sensors on the patrollers’ phones—like the accelerometer and gyroscope—to measure the skiers’ motion and automatically detect if they’ve been caught in a critical situation, like an avalanche or a deep-snow submersion.

If that happens, the app will send a loud, flashing alert to dispatch’s control center—in this case, Whittall’s computer—with the patroller’s location and trajectory. Dispatch can then radio the patroller to check in or share their precise location with other nearby patrollers if a rescue is required.

Patroller and avalanche safety are top of mind these days.

Two ski patrollers at California’s Mammoth Mountain have died in the past two years doing routine avalanche control work. This February, at Stevens Pass, Washington, an inbounds skier caught in an avalanche spent four hours awaiting rescue before his wife used the Find My feature on his phone to alert patrol to his location. (He miraculously survived.) Software like this could have potentially made a difference in those cases, in terms of getting help on scene quicker in critical incidents where every minute matters. 

This software is new to Palisades Tahoe, and it hasn’t been released to market yet—Palisades and a couple of other major ski resorts began testing the program this winter. If all goes well, the software will soon be available to other patrol teams and the public at large, significantly improving rescue time and location accuracy in the case of avalanches, tree well burials, and lost or injured skiers—including staff and patrol teams as well as ski area guests. “Basically, it means no skier will be left behind,” Whittall says.

“We’re not trying to displace avalanche beacons in any way,” says Got-U cofounder Ben Brooks, a PhD geophysicist. “Beacons are still superior technology for rescuing someone in an avalanche. But we’d like to think this technology can help augment the search and assist skiers in need.”

You know how your phone alerts you when an earthquake is about to happen near you? That’s in part thanks to Brooks’ career. For over a decade, he worked as a professor of earth sciences at the University of Hawaii, where he specialized in GPS technology that measured tiny movements in the Earth’s crust caused by earthquakes and landslides. He then went on to work as a research geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Earthquake Science Center, where they pioneered the use of smartphones as earthquake detectors.

Brooks retired from the USGS last year and was on a ski trip at Mount Bachelor in Oregon when he thought: Maybe he could use his knowledge of GPS technology and detection software to help skiers caught in an avalanche or other critical situations?

He vetted his ideas with colleagues, then reached out to Palisades Tahoe’s avalanche forecaster Will Paden, a veteran ski patroller, to see what he thought. “I’ve been in the avalanche business for over 30 years. I’ve seen a lot of near misses and close calls and have always been concerned that people don’t know where we are,” says Paden, a cofounder of Got-U. “When Ben reached out, my initial reaction was: This is an immediate solution to a problem I’ve been concerned about for a long time.”

That unlikely duo—a ski patroller and a geophysicist—teamed up to launch Got-U in spring 2025 and began testing it on the mountain, placing phones in slide paths before triggering an avalanche using explosives. Using data sensors from the movement of the slide, the software is still learning when it’s involved in an avalanche and when it isn’t.

“We’ve gotten a lot of early feedback from dispatchers and patrollers, and we’ve made changes and modifications,” Brooks says. “We’re always going to be improving, but it’s ready for rollout.”

The technology isn’t perfect—some Palisades patrollers said the app drains their phone’s battery, and false alarms are common. And, of course, the app does raise questions of privacy.

It requires your phone’s location services to be turned on, and it tracks and shares your location. But these days, many resort skiers are already using tracking apps, from the resort’s own app to tracking or sensor services like Strava, onX, CalTopo, AirFlare, or Carv.

“We want to be respectful of people’s privacy and of ski culture,” Brooks says. “When you come to a ski resort, we know people want to be safe, but they also want to feel free. How do you strike that balance?”

Brooks, a backcountry skier, says he can see this technology being used in the backcountry, too, but for now, testing it inbounds feels like the best way to start. “Ski areas are these self-contained physical environments with a rapid-response search and rescue team associated with it,” Brooks says. “It’s the perfect place to develop this technology.”

Got-U is also in the process of creating a standalone device—not attached to a phone—that could be used to locate kids and send alerts to emergency contacts, as well as options for satellite communications when a skier is out of cell service.

The business model will likely evolve into a subscription service, or resorts could offer it to their guests. For now, the first step is enhanced patroller safety. 

“As far as mountain operations, it can free up radio communication and give mountain ops leadership better situational awareness of where people are,” Paden says. “This is a powerful new tool for a higher level of employee safety.”

Related: After 80 Inches of April Snowfall, Palisades Tahoe Changes Mind on Closing Day