New Snow

(This is the view from my balcony.)

The past four days have been dark and rainy, but the clouds finally started breaking away yesterday afternoon to reveal a whole bunch of fresh snow on the mountains. Very exciting! The snow-line occurs at an elevation of about 2,000 feet. For reference, the city of Queenstown sits at 1,161 feet, my apartment around 1,690, and the highest peak in the picture above is about 7,500. Yesterday I went for a hike up Queenstown Hill with my new friend Liesel, it was a nice 3 hour jaunt up to the summit at 2,755 ft. Liesel had some difficulty navigating the snowy trails towards the top due to her poor choice of footwear, but this provided much amusement to us both. Probably more for me, actually. The views up high were stunning; huge snowy mountains everywhere, with a big blue lake in the middle. The shot below shows Queenstown sitting on the shores of Lake Wakatipu.

There are two ski resorts by Queenstown: Coronet Peak and The Ramarkables. The former is opening two weeks from now, the latter in late June. Their slopes should have some pretty good coverage after this recent storm. The folks around here are definitely starting to get the pre-season ski jitters, but I'm like whatev, I was just snowboarding at Highlands a few weeks ago. Just kidding, I'm super stoked to shred the New Zealand gnar.