Wanaka: The white stuff

A competitor charges downhill during the RipCurl Heli Challenge. Snow Park is the hemisphere's first all-mountain freestyle resort. Photo / Chris O'Connell

Things change when you don't go skiing for several years. Not only do you discover that your technique - learned as a youngster on the now prehistoric straight-edged skis - is decades out of date, but towns servicing the Kiwi number eight wire brand of skiing have transformed into fully fledged winter sporting wonderlands.

Wanaka, once a hick town in the backblocks of Central Otago with a THC hotel and precious little else, is today fair bursting with quaint schist buildings housing top-notch accommodation, as well as eateries, wineries, a hot pool resort, and roaring log fires at every turn.

It's not new that Wanaka has been coming up as a resort town for several years (you're hardly undiscovered when a Canadian country music megastar builds a little $30 million getaway in the nearby Motatapu Valley). But what complements the jaw-droppingly beautiful natural landscape these days is a full-service alpine playground, where decisions about how you will play on the white stuff - and which good local pinot you'll unwind with later in front of said roaring fire - are the only priorities in life.

Because play you can. There are four "ski fields", for want of a better term, in the Wanaka surrounds. Each offers a completely different set of activities and challenges, and appeals to its own demographic. In short, there's something for everyone.

Cardrona, in the Cardrona Valley, is the family affair. Kindly runs encourage beginners, although there is enough to keep the intermediate entertained. With four kids centres catering for three-month-olds upwards this field has turned childcare into an art form.

I decided to take advantage of the awaiting army of user-friendly instructors and afix my feet to a snowboard for the first time. At the end of the two-hour session my infinitely patient young Australian instructor Llewelyn admitted that we had both just done our first snowboarding lesson. It has to be said he came out of it looking better than I did.

On the other side of the valley lies Snow Farm, New Zealand's only cross-country ski area. Developed by entrepreneurial local farming family the Lees, it boasts 50km of groomed trails covered with artificially made snow. Cross-country skiing, the chosen sport of our gung ho prime minister (a season pass holder at Snow Farm), holds appeal for the more mature snowsport enthusiast.

Having given it a go I have new respect for my elders. Imagine jogging on skis wearing Tour de France-esque lycra.

Technique is everything, unless you want to make life very hard for yourself. But picture shooshing along whitened trails under a powder blue sky, stopping to rest in front of the fire at one of the accommodation huts on the field.

Snow Farm also has a comfortable alpine lodge with a bar, cafe, gym, and room for up to 60.

The Scandinavians might have been going cross-country for years, but for Kiwis it's a new - and invigorating - form of alpine entertainment.

Adjacent to Snow Farm, on the other side of the SHPG automotive testing ground (the Lee family have made innovative use of their land) is the other end of the snow sports spectrum. Snow Park, run by the Lees' son Sam, is the Southern Hemisphere's first all-mountain freestyle resort.

It's the winter version of a skateboard park. People wear pants with the waistband sitting somewhere around the bottom of their butt cheeks, and they "ride" as opposed to go snowboarding.

A 5000-watt sound system delivers music over the entire ski area. There's no one much over 25, but with a 160m-long superpipe and jumps of up to 20 metres it's possible you would need part of your brain removed to attempt some of the terrain park's features anyway.

There is a backpackers on site, and Snow Park has just built four luxury apartments, complete with hot tubs on the deck. More are planned, the concept being to create an on-mountain village in the style of European ski resorts.

Treble Cone, 26km west of Wanaka, is where the serious stuff happens - note that it is the off-season choice of training ground for the Norwegian and Austrian national ski teams.

The field has taken some flak for its lift ticket prices this season (its adult day pass is $99, compared with Cardrona at $77, Snow Park's high season full price of $75 and Snow Farm at $30) but it argues it has the facilities - it does have the South Island's longest intermediate groomed runs (4km) and is renowned for its powder days. And it's not all just for the advanced - where once the less skilled of us had to pick our way along goat tracks to reach do-able runs, the new quad chairlift built in the Saddle Basin a couple of years ago has opened up a myriad new intermediate trails.

But it isn't all about hard-out snowsports. With about a third of their clientele arriving from overseas, Wanaka field operators know their facilities need to be of international standard and catering has been given top priority.

Cardrona's noodle bar serves a decent nasi goreng. The cafe at Treble Cone offers sushi, lamb shank pie, and sour dough bread with homemade soup (the pumpkin, carrot and coriander soup is to be recommended).

But potentially the nicest on-mountain food was at Snow Park's new Woolshed Restaurant and Bar, where my chilli chicken burger with grilled haloumi cheese inspired one of the low-slung pants-wearers to inquire, "Hey, excuse me dude, but what's that?".

Off the mountain there is the exquisite Missy's Kitchen (look out for the twice-roasted lamb, it melts in your mouth); Relishes Cafe on the lakefront serves resplendent breakfasts; the owners of successful Queenstown pizza and pasta joint the Cow have migrated over the hill to set up a lively sister venue; and mulled wine in front of the outdoor fire at the 144-year-old Cardrona Hotel remains a Wanaka ritual.

And everyone, it seems, has a little boutique winery producing fabulous Central Otago pinot noir. Sharon and Kevin Alderson, proprietors of the eco-friendly Cardrona Terrace Estate five-star lodge just out of town, pressed a couple of bottles of their fine vintage into our hands on a visit.

Special mention must go to the scenery. A series of spectacular July hoar frosts in the Cardrona Valley incited much stopping of the car and photo taking. The memorial statue to rally driver Possum Bourne, who was killed on the road to Snow Farm, sits on an outcrop high above the valley with a panoramic view across the Crown Range. It's a stunning spot. Aucklanders, it's like flying to a foreign land, yet you can still claim it as your own.

- DETOURS