Right well I'm absolutely
spewing. It's been dumping .. heaps.
South
like Coronet and Remarkables have had about
80-120cm since Friday, it's FREEZING and Queenstown
got a good few inches of the white stuff yesterday.
The big southerly Antarctic blast has slowly moved
up the country and gave Mt Hutt about 40-60cm
yesterday although some of the ridge lines have suffered
with the high winds that blew through.
Awesome
dry squeaky powder snow I'm told by someone waiting
in line for the road to open to Mt Hutt.......Most
of the other areas benefitted from the snow too and
this has to be one of the best starts to the season
since about '96. Most of the other areas are looking
to open early which is good news. It's still waaaay
cold though and is forecast to continue.
Snowed in at Mount Hutt
It's
good to see that Mt Hutt had its first lock in last
night. Yup staff and some lucky people went up yesterday
at 8.30 am ready for some fresh tracks and got caught
by that BIG storm and spent the day and night indulging
in a complimentary shandy or ten in Beaches while
the storm raged and the road progressively became
more and more closed.
They
were, however, successfully rescued this morning!!
Thankfully this doesn't happen that often but I'm
told some of them were due to fly out of NZ this morning
and were getting a bit twitchy!!!
North
has caught most of the big snow we had. The desert
road just past Wairoua on the East of Ruapehu
was closed last night because of snow and it looks
like Whakapapa and Turoa are shaping
up for opening at the end of the month. Excellent
news esp. for Turoa which is actually up for sale
as it's in receivership.
Anyway,
it's all good <- as they say round these parts.
Colin
