Mt. Hood Meadows will be one of only a few selected ski areas in the North America offering drone video services to guests. Meadows will work with Cape Productions (https://www.cape.com) to launch the service this winter, offering guests the ability to relive their favorite vacation moments in professionally edited videos.
Cape’s drones automatically fly with you to capture your favorite moments on snow at a quality level that has, until now, only been found in professional ski movies. Customers sign up, meet Cape on the mountain, and get filmed by the drones while riding. Soon after completing their runs, customers receive a professionally edited and published video online to share with friends and family. Cape’s proprietary drone technology maintains safe distances from the ground and all major obstacles like trees, chairlifts and crowded areas, while still tracking riders. Additionally, Cape’s drones can fly up to 40 mph, staying ahead of even the most hardcore athletes, while withstanding the treacherous weather conditions and high altitudes found at mountain resorts.
The service will be featured on selected runs at Meadows, according to Director of Mountain Operations Tom Scully, who says, “We plan to have a staging area where the guest can purchase the service. While the run will remain open to the public, we’ll create a controlled spacing to allow those using the service to be featured in the video. Since personal drones are not allowed on the Mt. Hood National Forest or our permit area, we are excited about providing this opportunity to those that desire aerial video of their experience here at Meadows.”
Personal Drones Not Permitted - Policy
While personal drone use is banned across most resorts, Cape has worked with government, resort officials and the National Ski Areas Association (NSAA) to safely bring their drone video service to the public. “Since its founding, Cape has worked closely with ski resorts, as well as NSAA, to create the new gold standard for safe drone operations at ski areas for both winter and summer recreational activities,” said Dave Byrd, Director of Risk and Regulatory Affairs for the National Ski Areas Association.
According to a Cape Production release, “Cape has created a new way to use autonomous drone technology to beautifully capture people’s favorite outdoor experiences without taking them out of the moment or requiring any additional work. Cape’s first official winter season follows successfully filming hundreds of customers in Canada last season, in addition to aiding the U.S. Ski Team with their training in New Zealand this summer.
“Time with friends and family in the outdoors is sacred. Capturing video of these experiences and managing camera equipment takes us out of the moment, and video editing is both difficult and time consuming. Today, we are excited to announce the start of a new chapter in drones and consumer video as a whole,” said Jason Soll, CEO and co-founder of Cape. “We’ve taken a completely different approach by doing all of the hard work for our customers in a way that is fast, affordable, and beautiful. To make this possible, we spent the last year and a half building one of the safest large-scale drone operations in the world and offering our customers an experience that truly rivals being a movie star with a professional film crew. Everyone, regardless of their age or skill, should be able to get amazing video of their favorite experiences without any additional work. We believe that this approach is the best way for drones to serve the majority of people.”
Meadows is one of only five U.S. ski areas Cape identified in it’s press release announcing the launch of this new service. For more information about Cape, visit www.cape.com.