NZSkier.com - Magazine, Video, Web

Hey, my first season in NZ and just brought the mag, how often is the magazine published ? is it a monthly mag over winter ?

Hey welcome to NZ, hopefully we can turn the snow on soon for you.

Unfortunately the magazine is an annual, coming out once a year in May. Would love to put out more issues but the short season and relatively small industry here means one big bumper issue a year....Hope you enjoyed the mag and get watching the website as its like an online magazine with daily features and videos

Have a good season

Just picked up this year's NZ Skier in Snow and Rock in London.

Congratulations on a great edition with some superb shots. It's well equal if not better than a lot of the publications we get over here i.e. the one constant thing about the much-lauded Daily Mail ski mag is that it is pure deadly boring sh@te from cover to cover. I'd rather be caught reading hard core porn on the Tube than that thing.

As you say "content is king" and with this edition of NZ Skier, it sure is.

Great to catch up on Awakino. Laid a few turns down there in about 1973! And the piece on the ski wheels caught the Kiwi ski road trip exactly. Wot, don't you use VW Beetles with their superb rear wheel and mates-bouncing-on-the-back-bumper traction systems any more?

Over the years, I've watched NZ struggle to produce regular worthwhile ski publications and after a blooming start they've all wilted into manufacturer's blurb.

(In fact, I'm still waiting for the return of a pic of the TC ski patrol, I submitted in 1983 - could you please check down the back of the "Xerox" machine underneath all those print outs of the editor's ar$e taken at the '83 Christmas party. Ta.).

I understand why/how that content wilting happens and how difficult it must be to make it pay and that's why this year's edition is so good. Hopefully, the online presence will make it easier to find a business model that works and pays.

And superb pics on quality paper too. That Camilla Stoddard's the D's Bs ain't she? I was stopped in my tracks by some shots of hers I saw at a local exhibition when I was back in Wanaka during your autumn.

Rather than always frame entirely on the skier, she seems to be able to capture something much bigger than just the "ooh, aah. Gosh, he's a long way up" factor. There's a shot she's got of a skier (or is it a boarder. Memory going) booting back up to the top of the pipe. It shows more pipe than human which says a whole lot more about the mental attitude required by the sport than some multiple inverted shot. And I don't even like parks and pipes!

Anyway, for a homesick former Kiwi skier, the mag is a quality piece of work and has reintroduced me to the wonderful unique quirkiness that is Kiwi skiing. Let's hope Kiwiville never loses that. The old 1000-yard Craigieburn stare, eh?

Kwi Club (you still call them that?) fields particularly have a very special atmosphere. From what I can see online they still hold out for a completely different experience where the focus is 95% on skiing.

There's a lot of big glitzy European resorts would kill for that although I guess the real money for them is in providing more pampered family holidays (not that I'm knocking the big resorts over here - it's hard to argue with their size and sheer number of ways they provide to get you up the hill). You occasionally see the odd reminder of how skiing used to be in small Austrian or Italian towns off the beaten track.

PS. Have you checked out White Dot skis. Founder is Andrew Flynn, a Kiwi from Te Kuiti, living in in Sheffield. (Story for next year's edition?) They're out there on the edge of fat ski technology and quite simply, their graphics are way ahead, but waaay ahead of what anyone else is doing.

And no, I'm not connected with the company in any way except that (a) I'm privileged to own a pair of White Dot Preachers and (b) it's great to see a very cool Kiwi idea flying in the boutique ski market.

Cheers