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Don’t be bummed if you’re not quite up to the level of those hitting the jumpline then at Cardrona - that’s young Aussie superstar Valentino Guseli, reigning World Cup Big Air & Park & Pipe Crystal Globe title holder. Cardies has the Southern Hemisphere’s best freestyle facilities, so expect to see a lot of talent out and about in spring, local and international.

© Troy Tanner

Winter is often the best season for skiing, but it’s always the busiest. Ripping fresh tracks down deep powder bowls may be the ultimate mountain thrill but it requires more than just timing and luck in our busy modern world. If you’re staying in an Aussie satellite ski village, like Jindabyne, you may need to rise at dawn and bolt up the mountain to avoid traffic snarls and full car parks. On mountain, you’ve got to know the resort like a cunning local so you don’t spend half the day standing in line. The best powder days are sweet, but they can stir up a mix of adrenalin and anxiety in the keen holiday skier.

Which is why I booked a family snow trip to New Zealand for the very end of last season.

It was a gamble arriving in Queenstown the day Coronet Peak was due to close (September 25), but it quickly proved a good call.

Spring may not produce many powder days but it has multiple advantages. We rode for eight days straight and never once saw a substantial lift queue or experienced car park rage. We stayed up late. Slept in. Went out for breakfast. We didn’t expect it to dump and weren’t disappointed when it didn’t. Instead we carved soft spring snow under powder blue skies and drank up New Zealand’s pristine alpine scenery, while our offspring took to the parks and hit bigger and bigger jumps.

Anyone who has worked in a ski town knows late spring is an awesome time to be alive and in the mountains. Most punters – as we used to call the tourists who paid our wages – have put away their battered skis for the year and are planning beach holidays, so there are rarely crowds and related hassles. It’s end-of-season party time for the seasonal work force and the mood around mountain towns is life-affirming and festive. The snow may not be great but it’s usually good. Spring snow is perfect for learning, backcountry touring or sending it off a mound you’ve been eyeing all season.

The snow season always lasts much longer in New Zealand than in Australia, even in a weird La Niña affected season like 2022, which saw some huge dumps interspersed with mid-winter rain events.

Mt Hutt and Whakapapa still managed to keep the lifts swinging until late October. Hutt had four of their five lifts running, so you know they’re offering much more than a few sad white stripes for beginners to wet their bums on. Down south Cardrona and The Remarkables also stayed open until mid-October, while Coronet Peak and Treble Cone extended their seasons because the snow was so good.

To be honest it was hard to sit out the entire Australian winter knowing we wouldn’t be even seeing snow until late September. And then, as our holiday drew closer, it almost didn’t happen. My oldest son’s new passport didn’t turn up until the day before our flight (even though we’d applied three months earlier). Then, on the way to the airport, our youngest started projectile vomiting in the car, spraying his dad in the process. Luckily, it wasn’t Covid or contagious. He was allowed on the plane and staggered out of Queenstown airport with a new nickname: sick bag.

The last time my wife and I were in Queenstown we were young, kid-free and on a backpacker budget. We stayed at a hostel and rented a bomb to get us up the hill. Now that we’re older and in charge of teenagers there was at the least the consolation of staying somewhere good. We bunked down in a large family room at The Rees, a handsome five star property which overlooks Lake Wakatipu. It was an absolute delight to wake in a king-sized bed, stroll down to the lake for a dip, have breakfast on the deck overlooking one of the best views in Queenstown. And then go skiing.

A good snow pack meant Coronet Peak was able to extend for an extra week, so we started there. It’s the closest hill to town so we cruised up at lunchtime and were stoked to get a rock star park at the village base.

The resort is a Kiwi classic, once rated by Newsweek magazine in the top 25 ski resorts in the World, which seems a stretch but they must be doing something right, celebrating 75 years in operation this season. It was a good place to adjust to new hire gear and warm up the legs. The kids soon found cat track jumps to fly off and sprayed sheets of slush like they were summer surfing.

Coronet is easy to underestimate because it’s so convenient and does a great job catering for families and beginners (their kid’s club is called Skiwiland). But it also has some leg-burning runs and shapely bowls that would be epic on a powder day. Coronet offer night skiing on Wednesdays and Fridays main season. If you want to stay out late partying in Queenstown, you can start your ski day at Coronet with a 12.30-9pm twilight pass that includes night skiing and, hopefully, a spectacular sunset over the Wakatipu valley.

Nearby, The Remarkables has a big name and reputation to live up to. The abundance of steep, cliff-strewn free-riding terrain attracts some of the world’s best big mountain skiers and boarders and a Freeride World Tour event. From the base of the village you look up at an expanse of cliffs, chutes and boulders that wrap around the top of resort like a jagged crown.

In spring the focus shifts to hitting jumps, boxes and rails. The Remarkables terrain parks are impressive and cater for all ability levels. There are six different park routes, accessible from a high speed quad, that range from beginner bumps to expert kinked rails and tabletop kickers.

It’s a long windy dirt road to reach the resort and, typical of NZ, there are still big drop offs with no guard rails. I’d hate to negotiate it in a blizzard with cars stopping to fit chains, but in late September it was almost an enjoyable drive.

While there were huge patches of grass and newly formed waterfalls raging on the sunnier slopes, most of the resort was still shaded and marzipan white.

The jumps and features in the parks were sized small to medium and lured me into them despite the age-inappropriateness. Over my middle years I’ve gradually backed away from hitting jumps or rails and boxes, but this spring in New Zealand I learnt to fly again. And it felt good.

We skied and rode at the Remarks for three action-packed days. My teenagers are at an age of accelerated learning and improved rapidly. By the last day they were racing down Burton Stash, a concept terrain park that combines snow features with jumps constructed from natural elements

Designed by snowboard legends Jake Burton and Craig Kelly, it is one of only six such parks in the world, and the only one in the Southern Hemisphere. I trailed behind them and followed their whoops of excitement. After five days we moved to Wanaka and settled into a comfy hotel with views across the compact town to a stunning vista of lake and mountains. The afternoons were still and sunny, and we ended most days with a lake swim. Everywhere you looked around Wanaka’s outskirts people were out and about enjoying the natural world and seizing the day: rock climbing, tramping, sailing, biking, paragliding.

My wife and I fell in love with Wanaka all over again – finding it even prettier and friendlier than we remembered. Over dinner and a few craft beers we toyed with the idea of selling up, moving to Wanaka and becoming middle-aged ski bums.

It’s a beautiful drive from Wanaka up to Treble Cone – again, on a steep dirt road without guard rails. TC is less family-orientated than most NZ resorts – only 10 per cent of the skiable terrain is green runs. But their loss is your gain.

If you are a half way decent skier/boarder you’ll have plenty of killer terrain to explore.

Treble Cone has the largest ski area in the South Island (550 hectares), and one of the longest vertical drops (700 metres). Close to half the terrain is made up of black runs, plus there are some great side-country powder stashes to search and destroy. We hit Treble Cone on the second last day of its 2022 season and found the mood was already festive. Locals were skiing in comic onesies and drinking heavily at noon. The real celebration wouldn’t start until the next day, but evidently Wanaka folks don’t like to be late to a party.

Cardrona we saved for last and it provided a great climax. Cadrona rocks in spring. It’s always been a great family resort but many years ago it really focused on catering for snowboarders and progressive skiers and now boasts the biggest terrain park in the Southern Hemisphere. Halfpipes are prohibitively expensive to build and maintain for most ski resorts, but Cadrona still has several, including an Olympic super pipe. It also has three awesome terrain parks, including a three stack of monster kickers that skilful locals were using to explore outer space while we gawked from the chair lift.

My snowboarding sons couldn’t get enough of the jumps, half-pipes and rails at Cardrona, while my wife was delighted by the deliciously healthy resort food and the resort’s admirable zero plastic policy.

I was happy because my family were happy, but also because I was fizzing with adrenaline. At Cardrona I got off the groomers and stayed in the park, pushing myself to places I’ve never been for a good 15 years. Of course there were humbling crashes and the local shredders made me look like a total Jerry, but I kept up with my competitive sons and that’s all that matters.

All told, it was a fabulous ski holiday. My only disappointment was that the heli-boarding day I had lined up with Harris Heli didn’t get off the ground due to marginal backcountry conditions. You should arrive before mid-September if heli-skiing is your priority, although most years they will run later.

More info: therees.co.nz | cardrona.com | treblecone.com | coronetpeak.co.nz | theremarkables.co.nz