Wanaka's natural advantage

By ROGER FEA

The talk among guests at the big rustic table for 12 is about skiing - and from the open-plan kitchen come the wafted smells of cooking.

A sophisticated, somewhat Italianate-looking woman is cooking breakfast as guests arrive at this and smaller tables.

Andy Oxley, is a former Melbourne legal counsel for a major corporate who, with her husband Graeme, owns Te Wanaka Lodge.

For years the passionate skiers had been visiting Wanaka for skiing and its outdoors experiences, when Graeme had a "midlife crisis". They turned their backs on high incomes and bought the 13-bedroom Te Wanaka three winters ago.

"We love all things outdoors and you could not live in a better place," they say. "Everything is at your doorstep - walking, skiing, sailing.

"This is a community of huge diversity," says Andy. "Most people in Wanaka have come from somewhere else - maybe from within New Zealand or overseas. It makes for a community which is more accepting of new ideas and other people."

She believes Wanaka is the fastest growing town in New Zealand.

"Apparently, at any given time 140 houses are being built."

Depending on who you speak to tourism is driving the growth or people - quite a few from overseas - who like what they see and stay. Many Dunedin people have holiday homes in the resort and then there are the wealthy dairy farmers who have moved to Wanaka after getting sick of milking cows.

The town has a permanent, year-round population of about 4500 and hundreds of holiday homes to rent.

The marketing manager of Lake Wanaka Tourism, John Alldred, says that apart from skiing at the nearby Cardrona and Treble Cone ski fields, visitors come to Wanaka for its natural assets.

Visitors, particularly from Europe, say they want to visit destinations that have not been destroyed environmentally. He says they will pay more money to visit such ecologically untramelled places.

"There is a bit of danger that people will say of places such as Wanaka that the solution is to stop the growth. It isn't. The solution is to make sure you get the growth by looking after the place.

"The world is awash with mountainy resorts, but most of them are stuffed."

Tourism Wanaka is in the embryonic stages of putting together a conservation strategy around which its other strategies will be based.

Many people who are drawn to Wanaka feel that it is still unspoiled. They believe Queenstown, by contrast, is becoming overdeveloped and overcrowded.

Meanwhile, a visit to Treble Cone, 26km and 35 minutes drive west from Wanaka, is worthwhile for the view alone. It is one of New Zealand's most stunning. Lake Wanaka and the spectacular Central Otago scenery spread out almost 1000m below.

Treble Cone is simply the "skiers' mountain", suited best for intermediates and experts. It is steep, though one run, the zigzag Triple Treat, takes the steepness out of it.

A high-speed, detachable, six-seater chairlift, the only one of its type in the Southern Hemisphere, takes skiers and snowboarders from 1200m to 1860m, and its longest run is 3.5km.

Little wonder the American, Austrian, Norwegian, and Canadian Olympic ski teams use it for off-season training. For experts, it claims more advanced terrain than any other New Zealand ski and snowboard area, and fantastic off-piste powder skiing. Its natural half pipes are made for snowboarders.

Focus groups of skiers and boarders run in different parts of New Zealand for the Tourism Holdings-owned skifield, have shown that it is the ski field that skiers most aspire to, but few do. It is 96km and an hour-and-a-half's drive from Queenstown, at the end of the visitor distribution chain. Operations manager Brent Walton says groups tend to go to fields which suit the lowest ability levels.

Its market is largely local, but 20 per cent of its business comes from the North Island. The field is for sale and there are "positive negotiations" with a potential New Zealand-based buyer.

Meanwhile, the sealing of the Crown Range road between Queenstown and Wanaka in May last year - at 1121m at the Saddle, it is New Zealand's highest through motor route - has pulled Wanaka and Queenstown closer together as a region, rather than being seen as two distinct destinations.

Cardrona benefits in particular. It is on the route, an hour (57km) from Queenstown and 35 minutes (34km) from Wanaka.

Many North Island skiers and boarders who visit the Queenstown-Wanaka region include Cardrona in their skiing plans. Around a third of its business comes from the North Island.

Cardrona has a high base elevation of 1670m (a little higher than Whakapapa's), but the highest lifted point is only 1894m. That makes for flattish groomed runs which, says its livewire marketing manager, Nigel Kerr, can make novice skiers feel great.

The skifield, owned by a Melbourne family, is marketed as a family resort. Management staff make much of its superb licensed childcare facilities (for 3 month to 5 years old) and Kids' Club (5 to 14), which give lessons and lunch.

It is not a field which would attract expert skiers, except when they are with their families, and the two fields - Cardrona and Treble Cone - complement each other because of the vastly different pitch of their terrains. Nevertheless, Cardrona's ski school director Bridget Rayward took this experienced skier looking for a steep stuff. We did several short but testing black runs.

She apologised for the snow which she said was not as light as normal due to rain, but my new carvers loved it.

The mountain is known for its dry snow and the weekend I was there it remained open on a day when Coronet Peak, the Remarkables and Treble Cone were closed.

Case notes

* Te Wanaka Lodge costs $170 a night for two people, including breakfast and afternoon tea. Phone (03) 443 9224, fax (03) 443 9246

* Lift passes at Treble Cone cost $63 an adult and $32 for a child. At Cardrona the prices are $62 and $31.

* Cardrona has four, fully self-contained apartments (each sleeps between eight and 10) at the field which cost $340 a night in June and October and $440 from July to September. When more than eight are staying there is an extra charge of $50 a person and the same supplementary charge for a single-night booking and at weekends.

Ski Lake Wanaka

GoSki Cardrona

Te Wanaka Lodge