Treble Cone closed for the season this Sunday and as usual ended the winter in style. Treble Cone closing day is well known around New Zealand as being the best party of the season and TC fans literally fly across the country for it. The weather wasn’t very cooperative, with poor visibility from some low-lying cloud for most of the day but that didn’t stop anyone, the turn out and costume quality were just as good as any other year.
Traditionally old school ski gear is a go-to for closing day attire but at TC anything goes. As long as it’s not normal ski clothes you can wear anything, outrageous and creative costumes just seem to get better and better every year. This Sunday saw skiers and snowboarders dressed as road cones, pickles, sunscreen, giraffes, Santas, Chewbaccas, schoolgirls, Go-pros, Austrians, brides or anything in between. And of course anything ridiculous from the thrift shop looks great.
The plaza hosted DJ’s rotating throughout the day and despite the weather families old and young gathered outside to enjoy the music. The unofficial party in the top carpark was border-line out of control as per-usual with half of Wanaka turning it into a dance floor too. Traditionally TC hosts a “Slush Cup” pond skim which creates entertainment all day but unfortunately this year they didn’t have quite enough snow depth to create one. Instead they made a border-cross style race course for a ‘colour run’ style event. Friends and families could race each other down the course and get coated in coloured powder along the way.
The tussock skiing wasn’t quite as eventful this season with the Saddle Basin socked in for most of the day. Local freeriders were still about though, jumping, skiing and back flipping over tussock and rocks in the Home-Basin. Connect-the-dots was the theme of the day as people hopped between patches of snow in the off-piste.
This season has been quite up and down for Treble Cone. Opening 3 weeks late with extremely warm weather in late June and early July made for a difficult start to the season. The mid 6 weeks of the season was phenomenal however with more epic powder days than the last 2 seasons combined. For a while the skiing at TC was off the charts. The last 2 weeks have again been very warm, hot sunny days made for great spring skiing but resulted in the snow disappearing extremely quickly. On average most people had a really amazing season and are excited for next year!
