It’s been nearly 5 months since Google Earth’s release (on the PC), and winter is upon us in the northern hemisphere. Providing information about ski resort conditions sounds like a natural candidate for Google Earth/Maps enhancement, and now the good folks behind www.vlogmap.org have come out with ridertech.com, which offers video reviews of conditions in the north-western US, live webcams where available, weather updates and a geographic database viewable with both Maps and Earth.

With the level of detail that Google Earth affords (and also the ability to depict slopes in 3D), I can imagine future versions of this database breaking down the data to the level of individual ski runs, mapping them, annotating them socially, and offering live conditions, perhaps with hi-res overlays provided by the resorts themselves. Google could become an integral planning tool to any ski outing, especially if resorts step up with a willingness to provide geographic data for the consumption of sites like ridertech.