Cross country ski Apple Watch guide: cold, gloves, pulse

Yes, you can cross country ski with an Apple Watch. The Workout app has a cross country skiing workout that records time, heart rate and calories, and skiers have long reported that it draws no route map, so many record with a third-party app instead. In the cold, plan for a shorter battery, use the buttons rather than the screen, and pair a chest strap if heart rate matters.

The built-in workout

Apple's list of workout types includes Skiing (Cross Country/Downhill). Apple's advice is to pick the workout that best matches what you are doing, and to use Other only when nothing matches, so cross country skiing is the right choice over Outdoor Run.

Apple does not publish which metrics the cross country skiing workout records. Skiers in Apple's own community forum reported for years that it logged heart rate and calories with no GPS route and no distance. In September 2024 a skier on the Intervals.icu forum reported that watchOS 11 added a distance option to the open cross country skiing workout. Check your own result after the first session: open the workout in the Fitness app on your iPhone and look for a map.

What the built-in workout does well is heart rate, calories and Activity ring credit, with no extra app and no account.

Gloves and the screen

Thick ski gloves and a touchscreen do not mix, so learn the button controls before you go out:

• Pause: press the side button and the Digital Crown at the same time. Apple documents this for any workout.
• Mark a lap: the Workout app calls it a segment. Tap Segment, or double-tap the display. Both need a bare finger or a glove that works on touchscreens, so a segment at every stadium pass means taking a glove off or wearing touchscreen liners.
• Stop the screen waking: every pole plant lifts your wrist. Apple suggests turning off Wake Screen on Wrist Raise if your display wakes more than it should, which also saves battery.

Wearing the watch over the cuff of your jacket keeps it visible but exposed to the wind. Under the cuff keeps it warm and hidden, which matters more on a long, cold session.

Battery in the cold

Apple says its watches work best at ambient temperatures between 0 and 35 °C. In a very cold environment you may see a drop in battery life, and Apple describes the drop as temporary: performance returns once the battery warms back up.

Apple Watch Ultra 2 is specified for on-wrist use down to minus 20 °C, a wider range than the standard 0 °C rating.

For a long session at minus 10 °C:

1. Start with a full charge.
2. Keep the watch against your skin under a sleeve, where it stays warmer.
3. Turn off Wake Screen on Wrist Raise.
4. Use a Bluetooth chest strap. Apple suggests a chest strap instead of the built-in sensor for longer workouts.

Heart rate: wrist or chest strap

The optical sensor reads blood flow under the skin of your wrist. Apple names skin perfusion, how much blood flows through your skin, as one factor in accuracy, and says that when you exercise in the cold, perfusion at the wrist may be too low for the sensor to get a reading. Apple's own suggestion for that case is an external Bluetooth heart rate monitor, such as a chest strap.

Research points the same way. In a 2017 study in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, a Polar chest strap agreed with ECG almost perfectly, with a concordance of 0.996. The Apple Watch was the best of the wrist devices tested, at 0.92 overall. On an elliptical with moving arm levers, the closest lab condition to poling, none of the wrist devices reached acceptable accuracy. The authors concluded that chest straps should be used when accurate heart rate is essential.

For easy distance skiing, the wrist is usually good enough. For intervals, threshold work or anything you will compare across weeks, pair a strap: in watch Settings, open Bluetooth and choose the strap under Health Devices.

Third-party apps

Apple's HealthKit has had a cross country skiing workout type since watchOS 3, so any app can record a ski session and save it to Apple Health as cross country skiing. That opens the watch to apps built for outdoor sport:

• Strava has an Apple Watch app where you choose the sport type before you start, and it reads heart rate through Apple Health.
• Skiers on the Intervals.icu forum use WorkOutDoors because it records GPS for any workout type and allows custom data fields.

Before a race, test any app on a training session at the same temperature. GPS, battery and screen settings behave differently at minus 12 °C than in a warm hallway.

Where Skibuddy fits

Skibuddy has an Apple Watch companion app that the phone opens when a session starts. It shows the timer, lap, last lap against the average, heart rate and distance, taps your wrist at every lap, and gives you Lap and Pause from the wrist. The phone records; the watch mirrors.

An Apple Watch handles cross country skiing well once you set it up for the cold: buttons for control, a strap for heart rate, and a full battery at the trailhead.