Coronet Peak, Mountain summit near Queenstown, New Zealand

Coronet Peak is a 1,649-meter mountain near Queenstown with a broad network of trails that descend through varied terrain. These routes offer views across Lake Wakatipu and Lake Hayes.

Coronet Peak became New Zealand's first commercial ski field when it opened in July 1947 with a single rope tow. Tourism pioneer Harry Wigley of Mount Cook airline fame commissioned Bill Hamilton to design and build the lift. The first owner was the Mount Cook and Southern Lakes Tourist Company, and the season initially lasted only four weeks. Snowmaking introduced in 1992 extended the season, and in 2002 the Mount Cook Group sold the field to a Queenstown consortium, now NZSki Ltd.

Night skiing runs on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday evenings from July to mid-September, one of the few such offers in New Zealand. The Australia New Zealand Cup, organised by the FIS, stops here each August or September, and the slopes also serve as a training ground for world-class athletes.

The skifield base sits at 1,180 metres on the southern slope, reached by a sealed road from Queenstown, about 25 minutes' drive; the turn-off to Skippers Road is at kilometre 4.8. Buses run from Queenstown on ski days. The season usually runs from early June to late September or early October, with First Tracks between 8 and 9 am and night skiing on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday evenings from July to mid-September.

The south slope of Coronet Peak sits on a deep landslide that probably slid about 135,000 years ago, when a glacier undercut the mountainside. The moving mass, estimated at around one billion cubic metres, now creeps at less than 2.5 mm per year. The ski field's base lies at 1,180 m.