As the snow started to melt last year, work began at pace on an ambitious summer works programme at the Remarkables skifield in Queenstown.

In five particularly wet months, the 45-strong team of contractors got busy blasting, digging, and building.

The result is 4kms of newly sealed road from the base of the access road, a new 30-metre wide 1.6km trail of which 900 metres is entirely new terrain, a new six-seater chairlift with the capacity to carry 2400 people an hour, and an additional 48 snow guns, which required 2.4km of state-of-the-art piping across the skifield.

And that’s not all. The team constructed a new pumphouse; two new pumps were installed, and an additional air compressor was added to the mix serving 89 snow guns across the field.

Remarkables ski area manager Ross Lawrence said there were 10 diggers on site ranging from 60 tonnes through to 20 tonnes as well as a D9 bulldozer.

“The 2.4km of trenching and pipework was one of the biggest challenges. It took about five months to complete, with pipes running 1.5 metres underground. Instead of steel piping we used a ductile pipe, which has an outer ceramic coating, then a steel membrane, and an inner ceramic casing. We chose this becuase of its longevity - it has over double the life of a steel pipe.”

To install the new Leitner Poma Curvey Basin Chair, which operates over 1.2 kms between an upper and lower terminal, around 460m³ of concrete was poured. Each of the 14 intermediate towers sits on around 12m3 of concrete.

“Each terminal sits on a 95m3 concrete foundation. Once this was poured at each terminal, two steel portals were built, and then the mechanism and outer walls were put together rather like a Mecanno set. The biggest single piece of the terminals was a 21-tonne frame with drive components, which was lifted by a 100-tonne crane into position within the bottom terminal. Also interesting was the carriage of a nine tonne section, which was part of the mechanism - the wheels and system that operates the chair. That was put on the back of a 40-foot flatbed truck, which was towed by a digger to the top terminal.

“All the materials we used were hauled up by road or land, and we had a 100-tonne crane at the bottom of the site [where the main terminal is located] and a 40-tonne crane at the top.”

During the entire project, Lawrence estimated about 250,000m³ of fill material was moved, a lot of which was relocated around the site to create the new terrain.

This work represents stage one of this project. Next summer a new three-level base building is due to be constructed, which will be ready in time for the 2015 ski season. The floor area will cover 5600m² over three levels.