There are big, bold plans to make our southern ski fields bigger, but there is a long road to get there with work well underway.
It is a tale of two islands for the popular winter activity -- while it has been a challenging few years for skiers in the North Island, two of our South Island slopes are expanding.
Both The Remarkables and Cardrona resorts are getting multi-million dollar face lifts before this year's season kicks off.
Cardrona Alpine Resort spokesperson Laura Hedley told 1News the company is currently increasing its footprint for the next year's winter opening.
"We announced that we are going to be opening our Soho Basin chairlift for Winter 2025 which is massive," she said.
There are big projects both inside and out.
"We've [been working] on our rentals facility, we've increased our car parking spaces [and] next year we will include food and beverage.
"We started work on that in 2018, Covid slowed us down a little bit but we're back on track."
The Cardrona resort hopes to open up 150 hectares more terrain, which would make it the largest ski area in the country.
Hedley would not put a number on how much it is all costing, but she said it is "tens of millions of dollars" and the largest investment so far.
Winter is huge for our southern tourism hotspots.
The local towns like Queenstown and Wānaka are growing and visitors keep coming back, particularly from the North Island and Australia.
Resorts have been diligently working on long term plans to keep up with capacity and give visitors something new.
Hedley added: "We know that down in the Southern Lakes we get to capacity, especially during those peak periods like the school holidays."
Mat Woods, the chief executive of Destination Queenstown, welcomed the new projects.
"Instead of just that traditional going up a lift, down a lift, you now start to move across the mountain from basin to basin."
Cardrona is not the only one with big projects on the go.
Over the hill and not too far away, NZSki's The Remarkables slope is installing a new high-speed lift, replacing the 38 year old Shadow Basin lift and cutting travel time from eight minutes to just four.
NZSki chief executive Paul Anderson said the new chairlift is an "absolute gamechanger for Shadow Basin and and Remarkables ski area."
"We're building what will be world class resorts and we've been investing $90 million in the last decade [into this skifield] to make it the most modern ski field area."
They are also considering big expansions into an area known as the Doolans.
"In the future we will be asking permission to add another 500 hectares," Anderson said.
"We have planned to go over the ridge to the Doolans which would more than double the size of the ski area."
The question now is, does this put New Zealand on the map in the global ski scene?
Woods already thinks so. "We are world class," he said.
"I think we need to celebrate the fact that we are in the Southern Hemisphere and we can be ourselves, our mountains are different and we can enjoy the different terrain compared to the rest of the world.'
There is now only just six weeks until the season begins.
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