Personally I’ve never understood the stoke of first chair of the season. I have no problem with second or third or fourth chair or even the chair on the deck next to the barista.
I mean I don’t get out of bed for less than 20 centimetres of powder (actually, that’s not true or I’d never be skiing). But you get the drift.
My polar opposite is clearly Brendan Lindsay. The Christchurch man who scored the NZ Ski hat trick this season with first chair of the season at Mt Hutt, first at The Remarkables and now first at Coronet Peak on the new Coronet Peak six seater (soon to be Telemix come summer) chair.
What did he get for his mammoth efforts, tanks of petrol and cold nights? Three short sleeved t-shirts, one for each chair he claimed first.
Oh, and a one off three peak 2020 season pass on the proviso he does it all again next season. Ok, I made that proviso up. But he did get the pass.
Sir Lindsay (some are calling for a knighthood) spent the night on the mountain next to the chairlift to secure his spot. I didn’t even do that for Spice Girls tickets back in the nineties.
“It was a crazy idea that my wife didn’t believe I would follow through” said Sir Lindsay who we suspect may be regularly lax with his household chores.
“I told her last year that I was going to be first on the chair at all three mountains and she said, ‘No, you won’t do that’. I said, ‘I’m serious’. I spent last night next to the chairlift – I didn’t sleep. I just moved around a lot to keep warm and watched TV shows on my phone.”
Cold temperatures this week have enabled snowmaking to open the highly anticipated Coronet Express chair, which can take 2600 passengers per hour, at an average of four minutes from the base building to the top of the chairlift. Word is the anticipated Telemix (chair and cabin mix) cabins announced last year will be installed for summer on December 1.
