For the 2010 Winter Olympics, Google took their Street View technology to the ski hill by mounting it on a snowmobile. They then built maps of several ski resorts. First, here’s a video of the snowmobile in action.

And here is an example of the trail maps in action (see it big and read Google’s announcement post).

Before I opened up the map, I was skeptical this would be practical, but it is. It’s a great view into what each trail is like and would be useful for creating meeting spots on the mountain. And imagine if Google licensed this technology to the resort. They could put the cameras on top of the snowcat and have a new view of the groomed run each morning. That might seem like magic, but it can’t be far off.