It has been a great start to the school holidays for skiers in the deep south after skifields had a good dump of snow over the weekend - and one field had even more cause to celebrate.
Coronet Peak had closed for the season but with over 30 centimetres of snow the gear was unpacked and the food and drinks are back on as it reopened for one more week.
There were no queues for the lifts and only a third of the skifield's usual staff but the conditions were too good to ignore.
Remaining staff have been multi-tasking for the limited opening but those in the know have had the slopes almost to themselves.
Cranking up a skifield that had been put to bed for summer meant rebuilding the lift ramps and getting everything out of storage.
"We'd just got it all packed away," lift operator David Rutledge says.
Coronet Peak had to close 10 days ago because of a lack of snow and warm weather but that all changed over the weekend. A snowstorm on Saturday brought heavy snow down to ground level.
"On Saturday afternoon we came up and once the weather cleared it was like wow - this is great, what is it going to take, let's do it," ski area manager Hamish McCrostie says.
It took a lot of grooming, but with snowguns blazing Coronet Peak expects to stay open until its original planned end of season on Sunday.
