By PAUL YANDALL
Skiers had to jump for cover when an avalanche swept through at the Craigieburn Valley Ski Area in Canterbury yesterday.
Jahl Marshall and Andrew Kennedy, saw the avalanche as it was heading straight towards them.
"Then, all of a sudden everyone was jumping for cover. We had to leap to make sure it didn't take us out," Mr Marshall said.
The pair considered themselves fortunate they were not on the slope when the avalanche struck. Others were not so lucky.
"We'd just ridden down the face a couple of times. But one guy we saw got dragged about 200m," said Mr Kennedy.
North and South Island skifields are on alert after large snow dumps and fine weather prompted the Mountain Safety Council to issue an extreme avalanche hazard warning as the conditions created unstable snow drifts.
Two skiers triggered the large slide at Craigieburn just after noon.
The 50m-wide slide plunged about 150m, finishing up at the bottom of the first tow rope.
"We were up there blasting [for avalanche control] just two hours before," said the skifield's manager Nick Jarman.
The 1.5m-deep avalanche was a grade 2 on the avalanche scale of danger, where 5 is the worst.
Police and rescue teams began a search for missing skiers, but all 68 people on the field were accounted for.
Mr Jarman said all the skifields in the area had received large snowfalls over the past week and up to 150cm of new snow in the past two days.
Mt Ruapehu has enjoyed similar conditions, recording more than a metre of new snow since the weekend.
It is the largest dump of snow in the smallest period of time on the mountain in 15 years.
Mountain Safety Council spokesman Steve Schreiber warned skiers to stay out of back country runs while conditions remained volatile.
"Stay in the ski areas where there is an active professional control programme," he said.
The alert would continue while conditions remained unstable.
Mark Street, spokesman for Ruapehu Alpine Lifts, which operates the Whakapapa and Turoa skifields on Mt Ruapehu, said staff had been blasting the field regularly to minimise avalanche danger.
Avalanche sends skiers jumping for their lives
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