Finally.
After weeks of promised snow, which has either failed to eventuate or could be best described as dandruff, Mother Nature delivered a welcome, and well-timed, dumping of white gold across Queenstown on Wednesday.
While the snowfall caused a bit of upheaval — five flights in and out of Queenstown on Wednesday morning were cancelled, while motorists
faced a fairly treacherous morning commute, particularly around Frankton, Jack’s Point, Ladies Mile and Arrowtown — you could almost hear the sighs of relief from skifield operators.
NZSki chief executive Paul Anderson says Coronet Peak had 24cm by first thing Wednesday estimating about 30cm fell by noon.
By comparison, up to Wednesday, the ski area had only received 40cm of fresh snow all season.
‘‘It’s so perfect,’’ Anderson says.
‘‘I just heard from one of the retailers downtown that they’d all of a sudden had a massive booking come through [on Wednesday] morning for the rental gear, so that’s what this kind of news does.
‘‘It really gets town humming, it gets all those people from Auckland, Wellington, Sydney, Melbourne, going, ‘boom, we’re in’.’’
The Remarkables called 38cm first thing Wednesday, with about another 10cm on top of that by noon, but made the call to shut the mountain for the day.
‘‘They couldn’t get the road open because there was so much snow blowing around, so visibility becomes very sketchy.
‘‘They made the decision to hold that closed and it gives patrol a chance to make the mountain safe.”
Given the arrival of international ski teams to train at Coronet, the upcoming Winter Games NZ, Synthony later this month, more night ski events and national ski racing competitions, Anderson says the timing couldn’t be better.
‘‘We’re set up, we’re very happy and we’ll actually get snowmaking on top of this.’’
White on time: Coronet Peak assistant ski area manager Christine Law celebrate’s this week’s well-timed snowfall
He doffs his cap to his crews, particularly at Coronet, who’ve ‘‘muscled their way through’’ for the past six weeks in less-than-ideal conditions.
‘‘My team’s just done everything they could to get Coronet Peak open [on Wednesday] and there are a lot of happy people out there, I can tell you.’’
Coronet ski area manager Nigel Kerr says whenever it snows it’s considered good timing, but this snowfall couldn’t be better.
‘‘I can tell you, from the base of the road where I was [on Wednesday] morning fitting chains, people were very excited.
‘‘Then, seeing the first trackers come down towards lunchtime, they’ve had an amazing day.’’
Kerr says they plan to make the most of the cold snap and supplement the fresh snow with snowmaking to further build the base and give the new snow some longevity heading into spring.
‘‘We went from ‘winter is coming’ for a very, very long time, to ‘winter is here’.
‘‘Let’s enjoy.’’
Ski racers inbound
Bring on the internationals.
About 150 of the world’s top ski racers, and another 100 coaches and staff, will soon arrive in Queenstown to train at Coronet Peak.
Among them are the US women’s national team, excluding Mikaela Shiffrin, who has the most World Cup wins of any alpine skier in history.
Also on their way are the Austrian and Swiss women’s Europa Cup teams, and ‘‘a couple of fringe World Cup girls’’ from Switzerland.
On the men’s side, there are Slovakia’s Zampa brothers, who come every year and are adopted locals, the Swiss men’s Europa Cup team, some of the Austrian men’s Europa Cup team and Global Racing.
New Zealand women’s ski team head coach Nils Coberger says the latter’s a private team, with five of six World Cup athletes from Belgium, Germany, Austria, Norway and Italy, who are due to arrive next week.
Training at Rocky Gully over the next five or six weeks, Coberger says it’s a ‘‘pretty big operation’’, but he, too, is stoked with this week’s much-needed snowfall.
‘‘In Argentina, in the south, they have very little snow, in Chile they’re pretty good.
‘‘Australia, in Victoria, has very little snow, New South Wales is a bit better, but they keep getting these fronts where they’ll get snow, and then they get rain after it.
‘‘We’ve had a difficult winter to date, but Mt Hutt’s looking amazing … and now Coronet’s had its fill, so they’ll have all their snowmaking going like crazy.
‘‘I think everyone’s starting to feel a little bit more confident we’re back to normality and we’re going to have a great August and September.’’
Coberger says the next two months are the most important for ski racers’ training — along with national champs in a couple of weeks and
Winter Games NZ at the end of the month, both of which are a focus for the Europa Cup teams, the World Cup teams will stay on through September.
That’s when Rocky Gully will have water added to make it ‘‘harder and faster’’ to help get them ready for the World Cup, which starts in
October.
