End of another NZ Winter

It's that time of year again when our winter crew start to drift back from their Southern Hemisphere winters. As soon as the snow melted here last spring, skis and boards where packed up and our full-time instructors headed south to start work for the June opening of the New Zealand resorts With reports coming back of decent early snowfalls before most of them left here everyone was expectant. Conditions were awesome from opening day and were to stay great for most of the season with regular top-ups of new snow.

Most of our instructors head to Queenstown down in the South Island. If you haven't been, it is a stunning part of the world and the view from the ski slopes down to the bottom of the valley are worth the trip in themselves.

With two main ski areas around Queenstown and a few more within an hour's drive, as well as the heli-skiing otptions, there is plenty of skiing to be had, and especially in a good snow year like this was, it's a great place to ski.

The majority of our instructors are qualified with the NZ ski and snowboarding bodies so while working down there it is a good chance to get some extra training in and pick up a few more qualifications.

What with the abundance of snow this year the park crew had plenty to work with so there were some fantastic features in all of the parks to keep the jibbers entertained.

Those members of our snow sports school that aren't back yet are really excited to be returning to Japan and everyone is hoping that this season is going to be a particularly snowy one. The backcountry and snowshoe guides are also keen for heavy snow and hopefully early too. They've spent some time this summer checking out some new routes and are looking forward to getting out there and testing them.