U.S. ski magazine raves about South Island fields

Press, 1 June 1989, Page 33

U.S. ski magazine raves about South Island fields

New Zealand ski-ing — or more specifically half-a-dozen South Island fields — received a rave write-up in the latest issue of the popular American “Ski” magazine. “Ski” magazine’s editor, Dick Needham, came “down under” last August and the result of his ski odyssey is an 11-page spread (with some stunning colour pictures) in the April, 1989 issue.

His article called “Kiwi summer” has the sub-title, “sliding through New Zealand, from sea to shining sea” and should encourage quite a few Americans to follow the same route.

It is a well-written, witty account, though he sometimes gets carried

away with hyphens and a few of the facts and figures are a little exaggerated. Mount Hutt’s access road and the ski run on the Tasman Glacier, for example, have both grown considerably longer, in his version.

And even if Mount Hutt did have “900 acres of treeless terrain” (the usual statistic quoted is 700 acres or 284 hectares with South Basin excluded) it is a wonder there is any room on the mountain for recreational skiers. According to Needham, the ski area has “runs to annually challenge the training squads of the Swiss, Austrian, Italian, Canadian, Swedish and U.S. ski teams.” All have in fact trained at

Mount Hutt, But who can quibble with a man who says New Zealand will soon be famous (“largely because skiers can’t keep their mouths shut”) for its skiing, or as he terms it, “wild, woolly when-will-the-ecstacy-ever-stop skiing.” And especially when he adds: “For all practical purposes, South Island is the place to be.”

Needham skied at Mount Hutt, the two Wanaka ski areas, Cardrona and Treble Cone, Queenstown’s Coronet Peak and The Remarkables and went heli-ski-ing in the Harris Mountains. But in spite of strenuous efforts he never got to ski the Tasman himself, or even see Mount Cook.

He refers to the township of Methven as the “staging point for assaults on Mount Hutt, a blustery, windblown bemoth of a snowcatcher with a serpentine, 11-mile-long access road that climbs a mile in 20min.” According to the American ski-ing writer, there is a Kiwi contention that the longer the access road . the greater the chances of snow when you get to the end and he adds later (when turning to Cardrona) that lift-served skiing is only found in places that are too high to graze sheep. Cardrona is described as a “pleasant, userfriendly kind of mountain” and as the “hatching pen for New Zealand’s

fledgling skiers.” And John Lee, the sheep farmer who developed the ski area, is compared to George Plimpton and pictured nicely with friend, a Merino. By comparison Treble Cone is rated as “the retirement home for Kiwi bombers.” Needham enthused about its “balls-to-the-wall ski-ing over 2800 vertical feet of the gnarliest, moguliest, runs-to-ruin-your-ego terrain you’ll find in New Zealand.”

And The Remarkables, he says, “quickly acquired the reputation, oddly,, as a great place for beginning skiers and as the New Zealand mother lode of 'ski extreme.’ TIM DUNBAR