Canadian Queenstowner Christine Law quietly made history this year, becoming the first woman NZSki has ever appointed assistant ski area manager. She talks to TRACEY ROXBURGH about her journey to Coronet Peak and why she won’t rule out oneday being a food writer
A career in the ski industry isn’t what Christine Law envisaged.
But Queenstown’s pretty lucky it’s where she’s ended up.
From Mississauga in Ontario, Canada — about 20 minutes outside Toronto — Law didn’t even grow up on the mountains, describing her nearby east coast skifields as ‘‘pretty much just hills’’.
Law, now 33, went to the University of Toronto where she studied professional writing and communications, with a goal of getting paid to eat or travel and write about it.
‘‘At the time, I actually really wanted to be a writer and I think when I went to uni for writing it just took it out of me.
‘‘I was just constantly writing and I thought, ‘I just need to not write for a little bit’.’’
Her creative break led her to Whistler Blackcomb where she picked up a job working in the retail rental division.
She stayed there for two years, ended up managing two rental stores and fell head over heels in love with snowboarding.
Meantime, her Australian-born partner and her Aussie best friend, whom she met at uni, convinced her to do a working holiday there.
She relocated at the end of 2013, but it wasn’t long till Law started pining for the mountains.
Fortunately, Queenstown popped on to her radar.
‘‘I decided to come over here and see what it was like.’’
She first picked up a job in admin for NZSki at Coronet Peak in 2015 , then became a team leader and moved up to head of department.
For the first two years she’d follow the snow back to Whistler in New Zealand’s off-season, but that started taking too much of a toll, she says.
‘‘Buying flights, finding a place, setting up my phone, setting up my accounts all over again, I was just like, ‘I’m so over this’, so I just decided to pick one place and I decided to pick here, because I love it so much.’’
Still with NZSki, Law later spent a year based in the CBD as executive assistant, or office manager, working closely with the marketing team, and helping out Coronet’s ski area manager Nigel Kerr in 2019 to help build the summer offering on the hill.
Then, in 2020 she moved back to the mountain and took on the role of head of admin and events — fair to say there was a heap of the former and not much of the latter that year.
Staying in that role through 2021, last year Law decided she needed ‘‘to step away for a little bit’’.
‘‘I didn’t want to be that person that was super-jaded and grumpy.
‘‘So I stepped out of the ski industry for a year and helped out with some events — I did Winter Games NZ, Motatapu and a few other small events.’’
Last November, Law became a Kiwi resident, something she’d been working towards since about 2017.
Now considering Queenstown home, earlier this year when long-time Coronet assistant ski area manager Mark Sommerville, who’d held the job for almost a decade, decided to shift over to do the same role at The Remarkables, Law put her hand up.
It’s the first time in NZSki history a woman’s been appointed to that position.
Law says she felt a huge amount of support from her girlfriends when she put her hat in the ring.
‘‘I felt like I was carrying this flag for all of the women.
‘‘It’s such a good role to be in, there’s so much opportunity for leadership across the entire mountain and you get to work so closely with the on-mountain leadership team, and then you get to ski and snowboard.
‘‘It’s so nice to see familiar faces and work with people I’ve worked with for years … it always sounds cheesy, but honestly, I always tell people, ‘it just feels like family’.’’
So, having etched her name in Queenstown history books once, is she considering possibly becoming NZSki’s first female ski area manager one day?
‘‘Honestly, I’ve never really considered it.
‘‘But I’ve ended up in the assistant ski area manager role just based on the experiences I’ve had and the jobs I’ve done, so I won’t rule it out.
‘‘It would be pretty cool to claim that first again.’’
However, she’s also not ruling out one day returning to the career she thought she’d have.
‘‘I think it’s still on the cards for me down the line.
‘‘Nothing’s unattainable or impossible, if one day I decide I don’t want winter, I’m going to go lay on an island, work remotely and write about food … why not?
‘‘I’m not going to rule it out, but I love this industry, so this is what it is for now.’’
