Editorial - Mayhem in the Mountains - WorldTempus on Tour

This year’s ski season got off to a rather green start (remember the December memes of the Swiss skiing on grass). Well, now there is another story hitting the news, and this time it is about wearers of the latest generation Apple Watch who have been crashing and causing trouble.

Since the ski conditions have improved, Apple-Watch-wearing skiers have been inadvertently activating their timepieces’ crash detection feature while out on the slopes. This life-saving feature was designed to detect car crashes, but a wipe-out on skis is close enough in terms of acceleration and deceleration to send an SOS to the nearest call centre. Dispatchers have been calling Apple Watch wearers back, expecting the worst, only to be greeted with the swishing sound of skis on snow.

These false alerts had already been causing havoc on roller coasters over the summer. As the crash detection technology has been getting better, it has also been getting more sensitive as the gyroscope and accelerometer inside the Apple Watch are able to detect motion, speed, and G-Force. In the event of a crash, the watch automatically connects you to the emergency services, providing your location and notifying your emergency contacts at the same time.

The American press has been reporting the mayhem from Colorado to Idaho and beyond. Here in Switzerland, there haven’t been any particular reports on the phenomena, perhaps because the Swiss are pretty good skiers, or maybe it is because they have a preference for wearing a mechanical watch on the slopes. After all, the cold doesn’t affect a chronograph quite like it does a rechargeable battery!

For our recent adventures in Zermatt, it was a good thing none of us were armed with an Apple watch as our adventures involved many thrills and spills, from ice climbing in the Gorner Gorge to jumps and tricks on the pistes, not to mention all the daredevil photography going on to record everything.

As we are coming to the close of all our content from Zermatt this week, we thought we would put a little video together for you of our best moments (see below). You will find a selection of the watches that we were testing in situations where an Apple watch could have got us into big trouble! Luckily, we were wearing timepieces from Alpina, Behrens, Chopard, Doxa, Frédérique Constant, Hublot, Longines, Maurice Lacroix, Montblanc, Panerai, TAG Heuer, and no ambulances (or watchmakers) needed to be called.

If you do happen to be an Apple-wearing-beginner-skier, do not fear. It is still advisable to wear your watch while skiing. If you hit a tree, it could actually save your life. In fact, the stories you come across when you type “My Apple Watch Saved My Life” into the Google search bar will keep you amused all morning. And if, like me, these kinds of extreme stories amuse you, may I recommend “My Breitling Emergency Watch Saved My Life”; that watch works even when there is no cell service and the stories are just mind-blowing.

But before you do that, it is time to catch up on all the top news from WorldTempus below, so you don’t miss a beat of what has been happening in the watch world over the last week.