The snow guns are primed and the forecast is promising with less than a month until South Island ski fields start opening.
Photo: RNZ / Tess Brunton
This winter marks the first season since 2019 that overseas visitors will be joining the lift queues.
But it will have its challenges even now tourists can hit the slopes.
When it comes to staff shortages on the ski fields, it's not the snow groomers, instructors and lift operators who are in short supply.
General manager of Cardrona Alpine Resort and Treble Cone Ski Area, Laura Hedley said they were stretched to find hospitality staff.
"There's just some roles - chefs and cooks - where we're only looking at about 50 percent of what we need at the moment so... just trying to be creative around how we operate our outlets."
Cardrona Alpine Resort and Treble Cone Ski Area usually have about 900 staff across the two mountains.
Hedley expected they would be close to reaching that again this winter.
With help from Immigration and Tourism New Zealand, they've managed to get some highly skilled workers into the country.
They've also upskilled their local staff for more specialised roles, she said.
But that wasn't solving their hospitality worker shortage.
They were looking at different ways to cover the shortages across their two mountains and base including prepping food in town and bringing it to the mountain, she said.
"Reaching out to some external providers to see if they're interested in joining us up the hill ... just thinking about how we can work with community, with our RealNZ team and as multiple resorts the most efficient way possible."
Cardrona's latest chairlift in Willow's Basin was opened last year.
"Hopefully we get a little bit longer in there. We had our best snowfall last year the day before lockdown so I think a lot of people missed out on that terrain so that's a great one to open again this year.
"It will just come down to there may just be a few things that aren't open in terms of our hospitality or aren't open as people remember them, and we're kinda hoping people will be patient with us. It just comes back to staffing."
NZ Ski operates Mt Hutt in Canterbury and Coronet Peak and the Remarkables near Queenstown.
Its chief executive Paul Anderson said it has been a warm May, but winter looked set to arrive this week.
"It's always a nervous time as we lead into the season. But we're excited about the cold spell we've got coming which is going to cover the mountain in snow."
He expected visitor numbers would be 20 to 30 percent up on last year.
Australian bookings were already looking positive.
"It's up against a normal year so when we look back at our bookings in 2019, we're seeing stronger bookings out of the Australian market.
"What our partners over there are telling us is that they're getting slightly less enquiries, but the enquiries that are coming through are converting to bookings at a far greater rate."
Over summer, they've invested in more efficient, high capacity snow guns on each mountain.
They would target the lower slopes to help them open quicker and give them more certainty, he said.
"We have heard that it's a La Niña start to the winter and we looked back and the last two La Niñas we had were 2010 and 2015.
"Those two years we actually had record snowfall at Coronet Peak with more than three metres.
"But you really have to be ready for whatever mother nature throws at you, and that snow making investment is part of that."
South Island ski fields are expected to start opening from 11 June.
