Startup Alert: PoleClinometer “The Ski Pole Inclinometer Sticker”

PoleClinometer should be your new best friend when skiing the backcountry. 

With New Zealand coming off of a high avalanche danger season and September snow hitting the U.S. hard, the time has never been better to get familiar with some avalanche safety tools that could save your life. 

PoleClinometer is a sticker kit you put on your ski pole that gives you a slope angle measurement by your line-of-sight. Understanding the slope angle that you’re skiing is extremely important in gauging the avalanche hazard.

“Snowander is a favorite! They make a product called the Poleclinometer which has been very popular,” says the experts at Garage Grown Gear, a website dedicated to sharing the latest in outdoor gear startups.

PoleClinometer is not the world’s first attempt at creating an inclinometer sticker for a ski pole; however, PoleClinometer’s founder, Grayson King, was the first to realize that the sticker would need to account for the bend of a ski pole.

The 0.02 sticker wraps around a ski pole, and when you “Dangle It” you can sight both across a slope and down a slope. 

“I could still travel safely if I happened to leave my beacon home, but I would be very uncomfortable without my inclinometer, which I use constantly to help me make good decisions,” says Jill Fredston, who is an avy guru and co-author of Snow Sense, in a 2015 Backcountry Magazine interview.

King was able to whip up the first batch of PoleClinometers through a Kickstarter campaign, and has since become one of Garage Grown Gear’s best sellers.