Social media is popping up in the most unexpected places, although I guess by now we should all just assume it’s going to find its way into every part of our lives. I didn’t know social media could ski and snowboard, though.

Vail Resorts—which runs Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge and Keystone in Colorado as well as Heavenly and Northstar in California—has set up a social media website called EpicMix for its season pass holders. And it’s pretty trick, honestly.

How it works is, radio frequency scanners at all the lifts scan every pass holder when they get on the lift. The system tracks where they are on the mountain based on the lifts they use, how many runs they did, how many vertical feet they skied, et cetera.

I think there’s a safety element to the system—if someone gets lost, ski patrol will know which lift they took last, to know where to begin the search—although Vail Resorts is pushing it solely as a social media thing. Other resorts across the country are doing the same thing.

Basically, you get a dashboard where you can view stats of your season—how many days, which resorts, how many lifts, how many vertical feet skied and so on. For example, my dashboard says that Saturday at Vail I took 15 lifts and skied (snowboarded, actually) 23,318 vertical feet.

But that’s not all. EpicMix (a play on the Epic season pass name) is a true social media site, and members can share all their stats with “Friends” and “Family.”

By interfacing with Facebook, members can interact with whichever Facebook friends they want. There’s also a Twitter interface and, of course, an app for iPhones and Android phones.

Members can set up “My Leaderboard” with their friends to keep a running tally of who’s skied the most (if they care). They can also see how they rank against all other season pass holders on the EpicMix Leaderboard.

Remember how pictures on the mountain used to work? A guy takes your picture, and you go to the office at the end of the day and manually look at a wall of pictures for yours? Not anymore. That’s all digital and incorporated into EpicMix too.

Like I said, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised by social media appearing at every step in our lives. I was a little surprised at how comprehensive the EpicMix was, though, when I signed up this morning. It’s innovative.