Every season brings the same routines. The freestyle riders fly down under to prepare in the Southern hemisphere for another winter season.

The most of them stay in Wanaka and thus also use the Cardrona Alpine Ski Resort's facilities to train.

But to get there and benefit from a perfectly shaped super pipe, everyone has to do a pretty long drive on a sometimes – for the uninitiated – scary gravel road.

However, it’s definitely friendlier than the goat-track access roads evident at some other NZ ski fields.

The gravel road was built in 1977 and has been taken care of for 35 years. Every year, 2,000 cubic meters of gravel are applied to maintain good road condition.

The ride takes about 20 – 25 minutes as the road is some 13 kilometers long and has a vertical rise of 1,150 meters.

It begins down in the valley on an altitude level of 500 meters and goes up to the base at 1,650 meters.

But although it may take some time to get up there, the resort – check out the resort's homepage – is definitely worth it.

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