Cape Breton skiers showcase selfie sticks at Ski Ben Eoin

Skiers are sporting some new accessories at Ski Ben Eoin in Cape Breton — many are wearing cameras or carrying selfie sticks to film themselves skiing.

"They're either helmet mounted or pole mounted, boot mounted, there's all kinds of different ways you can mount the cameras," said Rob Carmichael, the assistant manager at the hill.

"You can walk out there at any point in the day and see someone with a camera."

In recent years, the selfie stick — a pole used to mount a camera — has become more prominent on the hill. 

Carmichael said the sticks are so popular, people often come looking for broken ski poles to make their own.  

"They used to come in and grab ski poles, use the handle at one end then flatten the other, attach the GoPros on them and follow themselves around the hill," he said.

That's how avid skier Ciaran Roxburgh made his own selfie stick. 

"You can buy special ones but I just made one out of a broken pole and some wood," he said.

"You can take really cool shots with a big group of people or you can turn it around and film other people doing tricks and stuff."

He said the sticks help capture the tricks he and his friends do in the terrain park, an area of the ski hill designed for taking jumps and doing tricks.

In order to carry a selfie stick, skiers have to leave one of their ski poles behind.

Roxburgh said the person using the stick doesn't usually do any tricks, instead they focus on filming their friends.  

Adam Nearing, who is Roxburgh's friend, said he loves doing tricks for the camera. 

"Jumps and rails and stuff like that, whatever we can hurt ourselves on is fun for us," he said.

Nearing said performing for the cameras makes them better skiers. 

"Not only are we pushing ourselves to get the shot, like to land the right trick but also we can watch the video to see how we can fix the trick or make it better," he said.

Nearing went online and bought himself a selfie stick made out of hard plastic. It cost about $80 and it was well worth the money, he said. While Nearing occasionally worries about falling on the selfie stick, he's not worried about his own safety. 

"Being able to hold it still is the hard part, so sometimes I think about landing on it and breaking something on it, but it didn't happen yet," he said.

Management at the ski hill isn't worried either — Carmichael said selfie sticks are no more dangerous than ski poles. 

"There's not a real danger there, but it's one of those things that you'd really hate to take away from them when they're really having so much fun and they're giving us some great footage at the same time," he said.

"I haven't seen any incidents yet where there's been an injury due to the selfie sticks."