The South Island's commercial ski fields are practically ready to open after a series of massive snow dumps over the past two weeks.
Otago's big fields are sitting pretty with an 80cm base at Cardrona near Wanaka, and between 60cm and 80cm at The Remarkables and Coronet Peak in Queenstown. Canterbury is also looking good with 60cm to 100cm at Mt Hutt and at least 75cm at Porters.
It's a big change of fortune for ski operators after a long spate of hot temperatures brought drought to much of the country this year and continued right through to autumn.
Cardrona general manager Bridget Legnavsky says her staff can't wait to open on June 11.
"We had a really nice warm mild May, and all of a sudden it turned on us, around two weeks ago, and we got full noise winter in our face," she says.
"We had a base of about 10cm really on when we started our snowmaking, and then we started to get snow, we've had snowfall after snowfall after snowfall over the last couple of weeks."
In a first for the ski field, every trail on the mountain is now forecast to be ready for opening day.
Ross Lawrence from The Remarkables ski field (Jeff Aldridge)
The Remarkables ski area manager Ross Lawrence says snow is good news for the entire region.
"For Queenstown, the whole Southern Lakes region, winter's a very important time and our business does rely on a good winter and a good start to winter," he says.
While there's enough snow on the base, the ski field won't be open to the public any sooner than the scheduled date of June 18.
"There's actually quite a process in getting up and running, from our summer development and maintenance programs, it's all a fairly tight timeframe, even though it's seven or eight months."
Mt Hutt will be the first to open on June 10, followed by Coronet Peak and Cardrona on June 11, The Remarkables on June 18, and several other smaller fields around the South Island.
Newshub.
