Skiers and snowboarders have gone to extreme efforts to be the first to ride the slopes on opening day at Canterbury's Mount Hutt ski field.
One group, awarded a prestigious set of red t-shirts and the honour of being first to "ride the chair", toughed it out in freezing temperatures for over 24 hours.
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"I got here yesterday morning, I came up pretty much when the first staff guys came up," skier Brendan Lindsay told Newshub.
Lindsay spent 27 hours on the mountain, though others took even more extreme measures.
"I wasn't actually the first here this year, so what I actually had to do is play fair by the rules and go 'right, I'm going to sit out here on the chairlift here all night' and sat there for twelve hours and literally just froze to death," snow-fanatic Ben Yorston told Newshub.
Ski conditions on Mt Hutt are almost perfect for the start of the season, all brought on by last week's snow storm with a very welcome 75cm of snow blanketing the whole mountain.
"We're just thrilled with the snow we've got in the last couple of weeks, it allows us to open all three chairlifts on day one and get wall-to-wall on the mountain," NZ Ski CEO Paul Anderson told Newshub.
Two thousand people took the day off from work and school to take to the slopes on Friday in what Anderson describes as a "calling".
"To be a skier or snowboarder, you really know the feeling you get when you're up here. It's a feeling of freedom, and you know with a mountain you say 'your mountain is calling'".
The Remarkables in Queenstown is the next ski field to open this winter.
Newshub.
