She fell in love with New Zealand and colleague, mechanic Jason Merritt, who will also appear on the show, when she started working at Coronet Peak five years ago.
“I was asked if I wanted to be part of the show and said yes.
“The TV producers interviewed me over the phone and suddenly there I was being filmed for a new TV show.”
It’s a tight-knit crew. Deere-Vester recommended her friend Henry Mason, 27, to the show’s producers and he landed a role too.
Mason’s parents taught him to ski before he could walk. After a couple of years overseas at the Canadian ski resort of Whistler, he came back home to the New Zealand slopes.
“Whistler really opened my eyes to how amazing the ski industry is, but Coronet Peak has the biggest personality out of everywhere I’ve worked,” he says.
In the show, Deere-Vester runs all the events and activities for Coronet Peak that take place all winter, from staff netball to the big Night Ski Parties with DJs and bands and about 4000 partygoers.
“The show is about the daily life of being in the ski industry,” she says. “All the ups and downs, all the things we do to make the mountain run and it’s a fun behind-the-scenes look at all the bells and whistles.”
Mason can’t wait to show the uninitiated how amazing and action-packed their jobs are. In the first episode, the new season grinds to a halt when thousands of guests are trapped at the top of Coronet Peak in blizzard conditions.
The crew’s stress levels skyrocket and they had to work together to find a way to get all the guests and their cars off the mountain before the end of the day and juggle the flow while ensuring that guests on the mountain got in some good runs.
“It was the first time for me experiencing a closure situation,” says Mason. “It was full-on that day – I was stressed out for sure. But it all worked out and we got there.”
Snow Crew is the fourth NZ series to screen on Bravo, following The Real Housewives of Auckland, The Circus and last year’s real-estate show, Rich Listers, which came under fire when producers were taken to task with not making it clear it was more “fictional” TV than reality.
Alex Breingan, managing director of Stripe Studios, which produced Rich Listers and Snow Crew, said: “Snow Crew follows the lives of some of the young and talented team and as is often the case, the producers get a tip-off that particular staff and crew are great fun and will make great reality TV stars. Then, once filming starts, we always find a few more that immediately jump out to the producers as stars ready to shine.”
Deere-Vester puts the mountain scene at Coronet Peak into context.
“By the end of the season, you always have 50 new friends you never knew at the start of the year. We all work hard together and lots of us live together and yes sure there’s the occasional romance and you meet your special someone.”
Mason, who is a hiking guide in the summer, says he brings the humour to the series and since Deere-Vester has her boyfriend on the show, he says if there is a second series, he would like to score a role for his new boyfriend whom he met in Australia over summer.
