Ski Areas Merger To Create “New Zealand’s Biggest Ski Area”

The amalgamation of two ski areas close to  Queenstown on New Zealand’s South Island should create the country’s biggest ski area, the operators of Cardrona Alpine Resort claim.

The centre’s operators, the Real Journeys Group, say they have reached an Agreement with the owner of the Soho Basin cat skiing area which owns the adjacent terrain to combine the two areas in to one, with a combined area of more than 900 hectares, more than double Cardrona’s existing size.

Currently Mt Ruapehu on New Zealand’s North Island claims to be the country’s biggest with around 1,800 hectares of terrain but that’s by adding together ski run totals at the unlinked Turoa and Whakapapa ski areas.

Cardrona this week and pictured top and below.

Soho Basin’s relatively high altitude, southerly-facing aspect means it typically receives and retains a good cover of early snow.

Cardrona’s skiers will be able to ski in the Soho Ski Area will be from the top of the resort’s recently installed McDougall’s Chondola, but for the time being Soho will remain a cat-ski only operation.  Cardrona are three years in to a five-year development plan and it seems any lifts in Soho Basin are at least a few years away, until the next five year plan begins, but Cardrona’s management are stressing their existing permissions are already good to run Soho Basin.

“This has been something we’ve been looking at for some time and we’re both extremely pleased that we can work together to build a world class ski area with integrated facilities and amenities that will be both New Zealand’s largest mountain resort and a truly world-class ski destination,” Real Journeys Group Chief Executive Richard Lauder commented.

Of the 100 or so ski areas in the southern hemisphere Cardrona will also be one of the biggest.  The size question depends on whether you calculate sizer based on developed area, available area, length of runs or number of lifts.

Catedral in Argentina (above last week)) and Perisher in Australia tend to be regarded as the biggest on the latter count with 40-50 lifts each and uplift capacity of around 50,000 people per hour.  They also have more than 1,000 hectares of skiable terrain.

Many serious skiers regard Las Lenas in Argentina (below) as one of the Southern Hemisphere and indeed the world’s biggest areas due to its massive back country ski area.