Snow in New Zealand
Saturday July 30, 2011 - Email this article to a friend

Winter has arrived with a vengeance; resorts are wallowing in it. In one resort people were trapped overnight after avalanches closed the access road. However it comes as latest figures show a drop in skiers after a poor start to winter.

Last week in Mount Lyford half a metre of snow fell and high winds caused a dangerous amount of snow to build up.

The authorities closed the road and 250 people had to spend the night in the Lodge.

At one point the power was lost and it was so cold that many people could not sleep. Among them were young children on a school trip.

The next morning the ski patrol carried out a series of controlled explosions and people were allowed to leave.

We reporter on it at the time on PlanetSKI.

It has echoes from a year ago when over a thousand people were trapped overnight in Mt Hutt.

Mt Hutt hasn't had quite the same conditions this year, but it has now re-opened after it closed a couple of days ago with snow and strong winds.

"Mt Hutt is OPEN. We received a very light dusting of snow overnight. The best skiing and riding will be on main groomed trails. Firm and icy conditions off groomed trails," says a statement on its web site.

This Sunday is Country Day when people are asked to come in cowboy gear for a series of fun events.

Round em up cowboy!

Elsewhere there are good skiing conditions in New Zealand.

Check out the videos from the area.

It is a long way from the snow drought at the beginning of the season that saw resorts unable to open on time and when they did it was only a handful of runs and often on artificial snow.

We reported on it here.

Figures just released show international visitors to New Zealand was down 10% in June.

Figures released by Statistics New Zealand show 131,269 foreign visits came in June 2011, compared with 145,825 in June 2010.

The fall was partly caused by the volcano in Chile that closed airspace in New Zealand and also poor snow meaning skiers and snowboarders from Australia did not book up.

Australian visits were down 14.9%. The UK is down 19.1%.

The new snow is therefore very welcome by those in the ski industry.

The snow though has not been welcomed by everyone.

Far from it.

It has caused more problems for Christchurch as it tries to recover from the devastating earthquake of last year.

The city is still trying to re-build and the snow has put that on hold. Power lines are down in places, some roads impassable and many have been unable to get into work.

"We're very cold, feel a bit abandoned," one person from the city said to TV New Zealand.

"No power and people are cold, just another horrendous nightmare added on top of it," added another person from Christchurch.

We reported on the earlier problems caused by the snow within this PlanetSKI story.

For the spirit of the mountains