It's been a bit of a mad month or so at Cardrona. We were trained for our jobs but it became swiftly apparent that our estimated opening day, 24^th June, was ambitious to say the least. Two weeks passed and STILL no snow, but we were certainly not going hungry. Cardrona provided its entire staff with lunch every day, and not just ol’ slop; the chefs were cooking up a storm in the mobile cooking unit they had set up outside the community centre in Wanaka. Many people donated money for our food bank, as well as other vital accessories (Yes, we need toilet paper!) and we were lucky enough to have pity taken on us by our landlord and given a month's free rent! Two weeks of going to the supermarket, then coffee, then the supermarket again and finally the snow came. And boy did it come! Cardrona managed to make enough manmade snow to open on 8^th July and the day after our fist big storm came and it dumped for about a week. One day 47 cars went off the road into ditches. Fortunately no one was hurt but it just gives you a sense of how fast the snow came!