The traditional snowing-in season started early today in New Zealand with the announcement that 250 skiers are stranded on Mount Lyford overnight.

“More than 250 skiers are stranded at Canterbury’s Mt Lyford skifield tonight.

Winds picked up at the field, 60 kilometres south-west of Kaikoura, this afternoon, blowing snow onto the access road.

Skifield owner Doug Simpson said they “closed the car park at 3pm [and] as the wind got up the huge amount of fresh snow started loading above the road, in other words, potential avalanche risk…” read more

A similar thing happened last August when up to 1,000 people were stranded overnight on Mount Hutt due to high winds.

Why the ski fields were allowed to open today, surely the weather forecast would have indicated that high winds were likely? If that’s the case all skiers should be given full refunds for the fees they paid and compensated for the inconvenience caused. This stranding of skiers is getting to be a bit too common.