Cardrona Alpine Resort, in Otago, New Zealand, runs from 1,260 m at the base to 1,936 m at the top. The map shows 71 marked runs and 10 lifts (about 37 km of piste in all).
Over the last twelve winters the ERA5 weather model gives it 154 cm of snowfall a season, 1,612th (tied) of 3,069 worldwide and 11th in New Zealand. It swings a lot from year to year: the biggest winter, 2024 (245 cm), brought more than twice as much as the leanest, 2016 (100 cm). Snowfall days average −4.3 °C at mid-mountain, and its snow-quality score ranks 5th of 25 in New Zealand.
Snow 24h
0cm
Snow 48h
0cm
Next 24h
0cm
Next 72h
0cm
Temperature
4.7℃
Max wind
8.8km/h
Elevation
1260–1936m
We do not show a snow depth here. The weather model we use reports snow lying on the ground — it knows nothing about grooming or snowmaking, and it is not the base depth a ski area publishes. In Japan we can check our figures against 234 weather stations. Outside Japan there is nothing to check them against, so we do not print a number we have not verified. Snow report on the official site ↗
Score breakdown
Fresh (48h) 0/40
Forecast (24h) 0/25
Snow quality 0/20
Wind 10/10
Base 2/5
Powder Score v1.0.0
7-day outlook
| Date | Snow | Temp | Wind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🌦️ 8 Oct | 0 | 2.2 / 8 | 8.8 |
| ☁️ 9 Oct | 0 | 1 / 10.5 | 3.8 |
| 🌦️ 10 Oct | 0 | 2.3 / 9.1 | 14.5 |
| ☁️ 11 Oct | 0 | 0.6 / 10.7 | 11.9 |
| ☀️ 12 Oct | 0 | 1.7 / 11.4 | 13.4 |
| 🌧️ 13 Oct | 0 | -0.6 / 7.7 | 12.8 |
| 🌧️ 14 Oct | 15.1 | -4.1 / 3.5 | 8.1 |
Runs and lifts
Counted from the runs and lifts drawn on OpenStreetMap, within the boundary of the ski area. These are not the resort’s own published figures.
Marked runs
71
Run length
37km
Lifts
10
Vertical
598m
Top 1,865 m · base 1,266 m
Run map
EasyIntermediateAdvancedOther Lift
The shape of the mountain
Longest run on the map1.4 km
Steepest pitch30°measured over at least 30 m
Average gradient of the runs12.5°
Which way the slopes face
North 3%
East 41%
South 41%
West 15%
Only 44% of the vertical on the runs descends to the north or east. More of the terrain faces the sun.
By difficulty
Easy 15
Intermediate 40
Advanced 14
Other 2
Lift types
- Chairlift6
- Magic carpet2
- T-bar1
- Platter1
See past trail maps on Skimap.org ↗
Source: OpenSkiMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0). How finely ski areas are drawn varies by region, so treat the counts as indicative. Vertical is the difference between the highest and lowest points of the mapped runs and lifts.
Live Cameras
This ski area does not put a camera on its own slopes. What follows are nearby cameras, not the pistes themselves.
Footage remains the copyright of each operator. JAPANSNOWLINE neither stores nor redistributes it.
Some cameras here are provided by Windy.com. Footage plays in Windy’s own player; we do not store it. Windy.com
How much snow it gets
Measured by us across 3,069 ski areas by one identical method. These are not the resort’s own published figures.
Seasonal snowfall
154 cm
per season
Worst of 12 winters
100 cm
A typical winter: 140 cm. The best: 245 cm.
World rank
1612
of 3,069 worldwide
Rank in country
11
of 26 in New Zealand
Elevation rank
10
Highest to lowest, of 26 in New Zealand. The centre point sits at 1,700 m, 81 m above the national median.
Quality rank
5
of 25 in New Zealand
Temp when snowing
-4.3°C
Japanese median: -3.5°C
Rain days
23%
Japanese median: 16%
Days over 5 cm
10%
Japanese median: 15%
Wind when snowing
14 km/h
Dryness 0.45
Frequency 0.29
Freedom from rain 0.40
Calm when snowing 1.00
The tick marks the median across every Japanese ski area we measure. All four bars run the same way — longer is better.
The quality score deliberately excludes how much snow falls — it uses temperature, frequency, rain and wind. Snowing a lot and snowing well are different things.
Compared with what is nearby
Within 50 km straight line. Measured the same way, so the ranks compare directly. Ski areas a few kilometres apart share a weather grid cell and can return the same figure.
| Ski area | Distance | Seasonal snowfall | World rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Snow Farm | 12 km | 116 cm | 2148 |
| Coronet Peak Ski Area | 18 km | 116 cm | 2148 |
| The Remarkables Ski Area | 23 km | 142 cm | 1775 |
| Treble Cone | 27 km | 282 cm | 561 |
| Invincible Snowfields | 37 km | 392 cm | 190 |
When it falls, and how winters differ
Month by month
Month by month, the most snow falls in July. September brings as much as July, or more. In amount, September brings 41 cm, more than the median of 32 cm.
26cmJun
41cmJul
36cmAug
41cmSep
Winter by winter
Across the 12 winters measured, the average is 154 cm, and 7 of them fell short of it. The leanest was 2016 with 100 cm; the biggest was 2024 with 245 cm (2.5 times as much). For 54% of the 26 ski areas in New Zealand, the leanest winter was the same 2016: bad winters tend to hit a whole region at once.
100
245
’15’16’17’18’19’20’21’22’23’24’25’26
Snowfall each winter (June–September total). The dashed line is the average; the numbers mark the leanest and the biggest winter.
Map
Where it sits relative to nearby resorts. For a piste map, see the official site.
Official piste map ↗ Coordinates: -44.8722, 168.9481
More places to look
Guides covering New Zealand
- Where to Ski in July and August: Argentina Has the Deepest Snow of Any Country on Earth, and Everyone Books New Zealand Argentina's median ski area gets 348 cm a season — more than Japan's 249 cm, and the highest median of any country we measure with ten or more ski areas. New Zealand's median is 144 cm. The English-language northern-summer ski trip points at the wrong hemisphere's end.
- Where Is the Driest Snow in the Southern Hemisphere? We extended our snow-quality measurement to all 59 ski areas below the equator. The high Andes are drier than most of Japan. New Zealand and Australia get rain on a third of winter days. And the southern hemisphere's snowiest resorts are mostly not its best ones.
Related resort · Snow & Mountain Resort News
Updated: 8 Oct 2026, 00:52