Ski Tips: Safe Lines Through Gates and Trees

Updated October 2026

Ski is a slalom run with a twist that changes how you should play it: the gates give you points, but only the trees can end your run. The mountain also speeds up faster than most players expect, roughly doubling its pace every quarter of a minute. This guide explains how the course is laid out, how the steering really responds to your thumb, what the speed curve means for your reaction time, and how to set a line that collects gates without gambling the run.

The rules in the code

Your skier stays at a fixed height near the bottom of the screen, 80 pixels above the lower edge, while the slope scrolls up toward them. The course is built from a stream of rows placed 110 to 150 pixels apart. About six rows in ten are a gate: a red flag on the left and a blue flag on the right. The other rows are a small group of one to three trees scattered across the slope. All the sizes and speeds in this guide are for a 390 by 844 phone; on other screens they scale with the height of the play area.

• A gate scores one point if the centre of your skier is between the two flag poles at the moment that gate reaches your skier's line. There is no partial credit and no penalty for missing one.
• A tree ends the run as soon as your skier overlaps it. The collision box is a little smaller than the drawings on each side, so a near miss that looks like a touch usually survives.
• The start is quiet: the first 250 pixels of the slope are left empty, so you have a moment to settle before the first row arrives.

Every run waits for your first touch, including one started with a New button, so you can settle your thumb before the mountain starts to move.

Gates are a safe corridor

Gates are 3.5 to 5.5 skier widths wide, which on screen means roughly 77 to 121 pixels between the poles. A gate row may also carry a tree beside it, on either side, and each side has a 40 percent chance. Those trees are always placed well outside the flags, far enough that a skier anywhere between the poles cannot touch them. And the tree groups come on their own rows, never sharing a row with a gate.

That gives you a reassuring rule: if you are lined up inside a gate when it arrives, that row cannot hurt you. The danger is in getting from one gate to the next across a tree row, not in the gates themselves.

How steering responds

Steering is not a relative drag. While your finger is on the screen, the skier glides toward the horizontal position of your finger, wherever it is, closing most of the gap in about a tenth of a second. Only your finger's left-right position matters; how high on the screen you touch makes no difference. When you lift your finger, the skier simply stays where it is.

That has two useful consequences.

• Keep your thumb low. Since height is ignored, rest your thumb at the bottom of the slope, below the skier. Touching higher up covers exactly the part of the course you need to read.
• Point, do not push. To get to a gap on the far side, put your thumb under that gap. You do not have to slide from the skier's current position, and long sweeping drags tend to overshoot.

Because the skier eases toward your finger rather than snapping, a sudden jump across the whole slope takes a fraction of a second to complete. At high speed that fraction matters, which is why early, small moves beat late, large ones.

How quickly the mountain speeds up

The scroll speed starts at 180 pixels per second and rises in proportion to the distance you have already covered. Because a faster mountain covers distance faster, the growth compounds: worked through, the speed doubles about every 14 seconds. It is around 490 pixels per second after 20 seconds, about 1,330 after 40, and over 3,600 after a minute. There is no upper limit, so every run ends, usually somewhere in that last stretch.

The speed depends only on distance, not on your score. Skipping a gate does not slow anything down, and collecting every gate does not speed anything up.

Because the speeds scale with the height of the play area, you get the same amount of warning on every screen. A row takes about 3 seconds to travel from the top of the play area to the skier at the start, about 1.2 seconds at the 20-second mark, under half a second at 40 seconds and well under a fifth of a second at a minute.

Choosing a line

The scoring rewards gates, but survival comes first. The best runs use a simple priority order on every row:

1. Find where the next tree row leaves an opening.
2. Check whether the gate after it can be reached from that opening with one smooth move.
3. If it can, take it. If it cannot, let the gate go and position for the one after.

Gates spread across the full width of the slope, so consecutive gates can be far apart. Early on, you have plenty of time for a full-width crossing. Later, the same crossing becomes a gamble, and the right decision is often to stay central, pass through any gate that happens to line up, and keep clear of trees.

Aim for the middle of a gate, not its edges. You only score if your skier's centre is strictly between the poles, and the middle leaves room for the small lag in steering.

Mistakes that end runs

Chasing a late gate. The most common crash is a last-moment swerve toward a gate, straight into a tree beside it or into the next tree row. A missed gate costs one point; a tree costs the run.

Steering with the thumb over the course. If your thumb is above the skier, it hides the next row. Players often blame their reactions when they simply could not see.

Lifting the thumb too often. The skier only moves while you are touching, so lifting and re-touching adds hesitation. Keep contact and slide.

Wide zig-zags at speed. Every big move is a period when you are between safe positions. As the speed climbs, shrink your movements.

A practice routine

1. Play a few runs collecting only gates that need little or no movement. Learn how wide a gate looks at different speeds.
2. Next, practise pointing: put your thumb directly under the target gap and let the skier travel, without dragging.
3. Finally, push for score by taking the reachable cross-slope gates in the first half-minute, while the warning time is long, and playing safe after that.

Your best score is kept on your device, and any run with at least one gate can be saved to the Hall of Fame from the game-over card.