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Cardrona What's On: Winter Festival is Coming!

The first "What's On" blog for 2019 – this week we're all about the Real Journeys Queenstown Winter Festival and what to expect in the early season!

We've had an interesting early season so far, with a whooole range of weather and temperatures! The Terrain and Snow team have done an amazing job to look after our snowpack with the changeable conditions – a massive thanks to you all for being so patient while the team have been working hard here.

From this weekend, we have Base Bar, Base Café, Mezz and Noodle Bar all open for your dining needs. The Pine Trees shuttle and transport from Queenstown and Wanaka will also be running. We'll have the lower mountain open as soon as snow conditions allow; the goal is to get Whitestar and Captain's open as soon as possible, then move down to Valley View. 


Weather Forecast

Here's the weather forecast for the next couple of days:

The team at Snow-Forecast.com are showing some lowering temperatures (ideal for snowmaking!) and possibly some bigger snowfalls later on in the week. 


Events

If you've got a wee grom looking to get into competitive snow sports, there's a meet and greet "Ride with the Parks Squad" event on Sunday! Come shred with your mates and meet the Parks Squad coaches. Parents will be able to find out more about the programmes and how the coaches can help your young shredder achieve their goals this season.

We're also all set to welcome winter in the best way with the first on-mountain events for the Real Journeys Queenstown Winter Festival kicking off next Friday! The timetable for the day is:

  • 10am: Event registrations open
  • 12pm: Dog Derby
  • 12.45pm: Dog Barking
  • 1.30pm: Tug o' War on Skis
  • 2pm: Suitcase Race

Terrain Parks

The Cardrona Parks crew have built six features on Upper McDougall's for all the frothing park riders to get going on for the start of the season. As soon as they have snow to do so, they'll be putting Lil' Bucks together (then moving across to the main parks).

Check out the grommies hitting up our early season line last weekend:

Things to look out for

We've changed how we're sharing our daily snow reports this year on Facebook – we've made a handy dandy Cardrona Snow Reports group that anyone can join, share their daily snow experiences up on the mountain and check out our latest updates. We post on there by 7am daily with the latest report info, and share anything suuuuper important on our main Facebook page. We're gonna have some cool prizes to give away throughout the season in the group, and we can't wait to see you all interacting there!!

About the Author

Jen Houltham

Communications

Jen is Cardrona's resident word nerd. She's out & about on the mountain most days; a big fan of carving groomed runs, powder hunting & laps through Lil' Bucks!