Mount Lyford Alpine Resort
Mount Lyford Alpine Resort is a ski area in New Zealand, at about 1,517 m. Its mapped area is about 2.1 km across, with 20 marked runs and 6 lifts (about 7.9 km of piste in all).
Over the last twelve winters the ERA5 weather model gives it 116 cm of snowfall a season, 2,148th (tied) of 3,069 worldwide and 22nd in New Zealand. It swings a lot from year to year: the biggest winter, 2017 (189 cm), brought more than 4 times as much as the leanest, 2016 (44 cm). Snowfall days average −3.2 °C at mid-mountain, and its snow-quality score ranks 17th of 25 in New Zealand.
Snow depth and the seven-day outlook appear here once snow starts to fall. Until then, the long-run record comes first.
Elevation of the ski area’s centre point, taken from a digital elevation model. It is not the base-to-summit range.
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.
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.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hanmer Springs Ski Area | 34 km | 115 cm | 2167 |
When it falls, and how winters differ
Month by month
Month by month, the most snow falls in July. September brings 64% of July’s snowfall. That is a steeper fall than the median for ski areas in New Zealand (79%): the snow here is concentrated early in the season. In amount, September brings 23 cm, less than the median of 32 cm.
Winter by winter
Across the 12 winters measured, the average is 116 cm, and 5 of them fell short of it. The leanest was 2016 with 44 cm; the biggest was 2017 with 189 cm (4.3 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.
Snowfall each winter (June–September total). The dashed line is the average; the numbers mark the leanest and the biggest winter.
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.
Run map
The shape of the mountain
Which way the slopes face
Only 31% of the vertical on the runs descends to the north or east. More of the terrain faces the sun.
By difficulty
Lift types
- Drag lift4
- T-bar1
- Rope tow1
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.
Map
Where it sits relative to nearby resorts. For a piste map, see the official site.
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.
Updated: 8 Oct 2026, 00:52