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New Zealand
New Zealand has a vast array of mountains, comparable in size, it
is claimed, with Europe’s Alps. Leaving aside the so-called
"club-fields" - comparatively primitive but no less-challenging and
entertaining for that - most skiers and boarders make for resorts in
South Island (in the Southern Alps). Here they either head for
Christchurch on the east coast, or Queenstown in the south.
Christchurch offers Mount Hutt and a cluster of smaller resorts and club fields. Queenstown, a bustling but attractive town on the shores of Lake Wakatipu, is close to Coronet Peak, one of the oldest ski areas in the country, and The Remarkables, the newest. By contrast, Lake Wanaka, some 44 miles from Queenstown on the scenic high route (but 73 miles by the conventional route), is – at least relatively speaking - an oasis of calm, with two resorts not far away: Cardrona and Treble Cone, plus some excellent helicopter skiing in the Harris Mountains. Treble Cone is, by consensus, South Island’s best commercial field. Cardrona offers mainly beginner-intermediate slopes with some contrastingly wild, serious experts-only all-mountain terrain thrown in.
North Island, without a major alpine range of its own, has a couple of small mountain chains and two big and important commercial fields on either side of a huge, sprawling and active volcano – Mount Ruapehu. Whakapapa, publicly owned, purchased its neighbour Turoa at the turn of the century, and in an ideal world could have linked the two to form a superlative ski area which would have dwarfed every other resort in New Zealand and probably Australia too. But although it is possible to ski off-piste from Whakapapa to Turoa, linking them by lift is, unfortunately, impractical.
Apart from these principle centres of the New Zealand skiing world, there’s a scattering of smaller ski areas on South Island, like Porter Heights, Mount Lyford and Rainbow, many of which started out as “club fields” – an intriguing New Zealand concept which precipitated up to a score of small, fairly basic ski areas with little or no grooming and primitive lifts.
Club Fields
There are a dozen or so club fields, almost entirely in South Island, and they represent the history of New Zealand’s skiing industry: most of the country’s commercial ski areas, including Mount Hutt started life as club fields. Those areas which chose to retain their non-commercial status remain in that category. more...Helicopter skiing
At the other end of the scale, there is some good heliskiing terrain around Mount Cook (at 3,000m (9,842ft) the country’s highest peak) in the Arrowsmith mountains around Methven, and around the Thomson, Hector and Richardson ranges in the Southern Lakes region. You can also heliski at Mount Hutt and on the Fox Glacier. On North Island there’s some heliskiing in the Ruahine Range some 50kms south of Okahune, and east of Mount Ruapehu. Most heliskiing operates on a daily rather than weekly basis.Roads to the resorts
With the exception of Cardrona, New Zealand’s ski areas do not have on-mountain accommodation, which means that each day you must negotiate quite long dirt roads with hair-pin bends and - more often than not - little in the way of crash barriers to protect you from big drops. more...Away from the snow
When you descend to base after skiing - be it to Methven, Queenstown, Wanaka or Ohakune (Moutn Ruapehu) - you will have escaped from the snow environment: even during harsh winters, it rarely snows in town. The valleys remain green, and the lakes blue and sparkling. Unlike the European Alps, there is no need to live in the snow in order to ski.Keas
These clownish alpine parrots are unique to South Island. They eat or at least chew almost anything that moves or doesn’t move in ski resorts, including (with troublesome results) the rubber insulation of ski-lift wiring, rubber roof-rack clips, rubber windscreen trims and even occasionally car seats If you are foolish enough to leave your window open. Tourists are amused by them even when they devour their packed lunch, but ski areas find them a serious nuisance. They are, however, protected.Boxes leftside
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