Skiing in Queenstown
Summary
Queenstown offers the best skiing options and best adrenaline capital for anywhere within a 10,000km radius, so it is certainly the best choice to get your fix of either without traveling 20 hours on a plane. It’s beautiful scenery of the nearby valleys and Lake Wakatipu, plus the wonderful Kiwi way of making sure everything works without a hitch ,makes its a great option when in this part of the world
That being said, its a very different experience to the larger snow fields you may be used to in Europe or North America, mainly because of the smaller sizes of the two skiing options Coronet Peak (4 ski lifts total) and The Remarkables (also 4 ski lifts total), and with no interlink between the resorts. When you compare this to some of the giant interconnected ski spots of the world, it can make Queenstown feel a little underwhelming. So, to counter this, don’t see Queenstown as one of those week-or-more ski holidays. Instead, I’d suggest aim to spend a day at each site and combine your trip with getting involved in the various other activities that Queenstown and this part of New Zealand has to offer – in particular,Paragliding through the mountains and clouds in Queenstown, Bungy jumping the Thrillogy in Queenstown and the nearby experiences of Taking a boat trip through Milford Sound and Climbing the Frans Josef Glacier
Experiences nearby
The below map shows experiences nearby with a colour that reflect the Overall Score of those experiences
Other Snowy Adventures around the World
Score Detail
Background - how many times have you asked someone what a travel experience was like and the response was "amazing" or "awesome"? That response is nice to know, but it makes it hard to differentiate that experience compared to others. That is exactly what these scores are trying to do - differentiate the experience by giving a score out of 10 based on 6 categories and then giving an overall experience score
This overall experience score is calculated by: take the highest of the "Culture" or "Nature" score (1-10) + "Fun factor" (1-10) + "Avoiding the crowds" (1-10) + highest of the "Unique" or "World Famous score" (1-10). Then convert into a score out of 100
Extra detail - the logic being that I find all of the 6 individual scores important, but I don't want to mark an experience down just because it doesn't cover both "Culture" and "Nature", or because it isn't both "World Famous" and "Unique". Take the examples of Safari in The Serengeti and walking through Rome - they both appeal at opposite ends of the nature / culture spectrum, and you can have a fantastic time without needing to appeal to both sides. So, their overall scores aren't penalized for their lack of one or the other, and I've done the same for "World Famous" vs "Unique". But . . . I do think that the "Fun factor" of an experience is important, irrelevant of other factors, and so is "Avoiding the Crowds" (or where there are crowds that add to the experience). So, both of these scores are standalone