Views from Coronet Peak

Day 8 - Skiing at Coronet Peak

Here is Dave skiing off to get on the chair lift.

The people in the blue jackets are the instructors. Every morning and afternoon, the instructors all meet at the bottom to pick up their eager (and nervous) skiers.

Here, you can see the snow making machines, which are the yellow objects in the picture.

Straight ahead is the 'big easy', which is the only green run.  To the right you can see the 'magic carpet' where all the learners practice the most important things - stopping and slowing down.

Here are all the people lining up as part of the lessons.

Day 6 - Snowing in Queenstown! (part 3)

Here's Dave with the infamous Fergburger, "Big Al".  To read about this artery-clogging culinary extravaganza click here.

Once the sun came out, the snow quickly melted away, soaking into ground, as quickly as it covered the pavement.  Once it leaves, it can't come back, which is what I found so beautiful about snow - it's so delicate, but so striking at the same time.

Day 6 - Snowing in Queenstown! (part 2)

We walked down to the lake, Lake Wakitipu...

...the novelty of the snow brought everyone out to make snow men and have fun in the snow.

Day 6 - Snowing in Queenstown!

On the morning of our third day in Queenstown, we awoke to it snowing. You can actually see the snow falling.  It was such a fantastic experience.  This shot was taken at about 8.00am, just as we were leaving to go to the snow field, Coronet Peak.  Our car is the one in the middle.

As we were leaving, we had to stop and put chains on our car.  A was car coming up the road towards us, swerving all over the place.  At one point, the car was on an angle, trying to drive up the road, but it couldn't move an inch.  You can see its tyre tracks on the road. 

Seeing that there was so much snow, all the snow fields were closed for the day.  So, we had to spend the day in Queenstown.  It was pretty disappointing, since we were very keen to ski, but it was nice to have a quiet day.  Here are some shots of our walk in to town.

Here, you can see Queenstown completely covered in snow, quite beautiful.

Queenstown

Day 3 - driving to Queenstown

Here are a few snaps of the scenery we drove through from Mt. Cook to Queenstown.

We were lucky that we had a car, so we could stop when we saw something really cool.

This is Lindis Pass.  Quite amazing to drive through, especially because there was so much snow.

This is where we stopped for lunch, although I can't remember where it is.

This is Roaring Meg, the water was an amazing aqua.