Coronet (& NZ generally) gets dumped on

There was snow down to sea level at Dunedin, providing some funny traffic footage for the news – it’s got some seriously steep streets and with 10cm snow, caos rules -but more importantly the big chill bought snow to all mountains. Coronet Peak got more than 20cm of thick white powder on ‘The Peak’ over the past 48 hours, topped up by snow guns running at maximum capacity piling additional white gold onto main trails.
A beaming Coronet Peak ski area manager Ross Copland said the build-up “simply couldn’t be better” with just 11 days to go until the mountain’s scheduled opening on Saturday June 8.
“We’ve all been stoked with the two really good falls we’ve had already this month so the snow over the past two days, covering the mountain from top to bottom, really is the icing on the cake,” he said.
Queenstown and Wakatipu Basin residents who saw snow guns lighting up the night sky as temperatures plummeted to minus 9C overnight were even more thrilled to open curtains this morning to snow down to town level.
Today’s (Tuesday May 28) snowfall of around 15cm since the early hours of the morning is still being topped up as heavy snow continues to fall throughout the day.
Over at The Remarkables ski area, 30cm of snow has fallen at the base building and the access road is closed for the day.
Coronet Peak is scheduled to open for the 2013 season on June 8, Canterbury’s Mt Hutt on June 15 and The Remarkables on June 22.