Home-made lasagne and brownies on Friday provided all the sustenance required for four Queenstown teenagers, who spent a chilly night at Coronet Peak to ensure they were first on the chairlift for 2014.
Friends Finn Duffy, Tiarn Collins, Jacob O'Donoghue-Price and Cooper Neilson arrived at the base building at 7pm on Friday and spent the night relaxing ''around a fire'' to ensure they were the first people in Australia and New Zealand on the chairlifts.
Finn told the Otago Daily Times the friends had been second on the lifts before, but never first in line.
''We just thought we would try it out and see what the competition was like.''
There was no competition until 5am on Saturday when Tania Pimm arrived with her children - the family had been first in line for the past three consecutive years, but had to settle for second on Saturday.
''I talked to the kids about it,'' Mrs Pimm said.
''It's a life lesson.''
Ski area manager Ross Copland sprayed a bottle of a local sparkling wine before officially declaring Coronet Peak open for winter just before 9am, with about 600 people there to enjoy the first runs of the season.
Mr Copland said yesterday it had been a ''great'' opening weekend with more people than expected.
''We were thinking about 1100 each day. We had about 1400 on Saturday and a bit over 1100 [yesterday].
''We've had glorious weather which has been a big help, nice cold temperatures overnight [on Saturday] which kept the snow in good condition [and] we've had really good feedback.''
Mr Copland said there was likely to be a ''dusting'' of snow tonight, which would hopefully enable snowmaking.
A ''big southerly system'', forecast to arrive on Sunday, would hopefully bring ''a big dump'', he said.
