Australia & The Pacific's Top Skiing Destinations

Coronet Peak (New Zealand)

Queenstown's old ski area is across the Wakatipu Valley from the town's more recent resort, The Remarkables, and commands superb views of both the mountains and Lake Wakatipu.
Snow-making has been extended and Coronet Peak now claims the most trails (6 miles) with snow cannon in New Zealand.
Beginners have not been forgotten; there is a new novice area, Peak Meadows. Coronet Peak's trails provide a good mix for novices and intermediates, with a wealth of blue cruising trails like M1, Wall Street, Greengates and Shirtfront. In good powder, the runs to try are the Back Bowls and Sara Sue.

Mount Buller (Australia)

Mount Buller is located in Victoria's High Country, three hours drive from Melbourne. It is Australia's biggest resort in terms of lifts and now it wants to build more on Mount Stirling, a cross country resort across the valley. The locals are indignant about Buller's plans to build lifts.
The trails at Buller command some of the most breathtaking scenery of any ski area in Australia.

Mount Cook (New Zealand)

Not a ski resort as such (although skiing in South Island started here in the early 1920s) but the setting for flights by ski-plane to the outstandingly beautiful Tasman Glacier.
Skiers are transported 11 miles or so from an air strip near Mount Cook Village by Swiss Pilatus ski-planes which land at the top of the glacier

Mount Hutt (New Zealand)

Rising high above the Canterbury Plains, 90 minutes from Christchurch, Mount Hutt is one of the first ski areas in the southern hemisphere to open, with skiing from May to October.
Severe storms can sometimes close the resort or make the long, precarious road (the highest in New Zealand) too dangerous to negotiate, hence its nickname of Mount Shut. But snow conditions are often excellent, with good powder.
Mount Hutt has snow making facilities covering 100 acres.
Beginner and intermediate trails such as Broadway and Morning Glory dominate the central section of the ski area, with most of the challenging black runs on both perimeters.
With a vertical drop of 2,165ft (one of the biggest in Australasia), Mount Hutt has 900 acres of skiing served by 10 lifts. Helicopter skiing is also available.

Perisher / Smiggins (Australia)

As you would expect from a ski area owned by Kerry Packer and run by his son James, Perisher markets itself aggressively. It needs to. The enemy is on both sides: Thredbo to the South, Blue Cow to the North.
Perisher makes great play of having more than twice as many slopes above 5,249ft than any other Australian resort.
Perisher Valley itself is flat, yet there is seriously steep skiing below Olympic Steppes (sometimes producing formidable deep-snow skiing, but more often great moguls) and some of the runs off Mount Perisher are challenging.

The Remarkables (New Zealand)

When you first gaze up at the jagged, snow-encrusted teeth of The Remarkables, which dominate the Queenstown skyline, you cannot work out where there could possibly be any skiing.
But The Remarkables offers good beginner and intermediate terrain in a large bowl scooped out on the benign side of the pinnacles. There is challenging skiing, although there are only three lifts (apart from beginners' tows): from the Shadow Basin chair at least 10 black runs can be reached.

Thredbo (Australia)

Thredbo has spent almost US$45m on improvements in the last seven years (including a new express quad chair, The Cruiser) and this has probably turned it into Australia's best ski resort.
At the foot of Mount Crackenback and less than 4 miles from Australia's highest peak, Mount Kosciusko, Thredbo has the most attractive village, the biggest vertical drop (10ft short of New Zealand's highest at Whakapapa) and a snow-making system claimed to be the largest in the southern hemisphere. Thredbo also claims the longest run in the country, the Village Trail (4 miles).

Treble Cone (New Zealand)

Some of the steepest inresort slopes in New Zealand can be found at Treble Cone, beneath the flanks of New Zealand's Southern Alps.
Strong skiers are attracted to the area, and will often walk the last 820ft to the summit to achieve fresh tracks in powder and a bonus to the 1,968ft vertical drop the lifts offer. Recently the resort has been trying to encourage family skiers too.
Treble Cone is well-known for its population of Keas, New Zealand's mischievous Alpine parrot.

Turoa (New Zealand)

New Zealand's second biggest ski area is on the same volcano as the biggest (Whakapapa). But Turoa's terrain is very different. Its main attraction is a series of long, undulating gulleys which can provide skiers with fine off-piste cruising.
Turoa was conceived as recently as the 1970s as an overspill resort for Whakapapa. It is possible to traverse between the two resorts, but a complete link is unlikely because of environmental pressures.

Whakapapa (New Zealand)

Even down-under, skiers are only begirning to be alerted to the qualities of this excellent resort.
Whakapapa, probably New Zealand's oldest skiing centre, combines awe-inspiring terrain and scenery. It is built on the flanks of Mount Ruapehu, one of three dramatic volcanoes that rise from nowhere in the middle of North Island.
From the Whakapapa side, a series of half a dozen individual peaks dominate the skyline. Between these peaks are a number of gulleys which can be negotiated by advanced skiers prepared to hike up to reach them. Below the gulleys is more extreme terrain which can be reached from the Valley T-bar lift.