He took Catherine Pattison for a ride in his snow cat and showed her how to stitch together the "perfect corduroy".
When Treble Cone's mountain-goers are well ensconced in their apres ski socialising, a lonesome pair of staff members light up the night and get grooming.
At 3.30pm, Paul Kirkland's snow cat growls into life, its 370hp diesel engine beats a track to the dishevelled runs and by the shift's end at 2am, all will be restored to smooth, corrugated grooves.
Originally from Timaru, Mr Kirkland has returned each winter, the skifield's contours and gradients melded into his memory.
"You get loyal. TC is a great mountain. It's challenging to groom."
Indeed, there is much more to levelling out the slopes than the average skier or boarder realises.
Mr Kirkland's brow creases as he summarises the public's impression of his profession.
"People think we have a cruisy job, sitting around on our [bottoms] all day, driving fancy toys."
The reality is that before the mountain has even opened for the season, he is hard at work building a base and padding areas that he knows will be worn down come the spring slush.
He begins his 10-hour shift by collecting what has been deposited by the snow guns and shifting it across the slope.
After the winch cable is attached to a buried anchor, he shovels the snow back uphill - the machine exerting 2.5 tonnes of load on its line as it powers forward.
The winch allows him to work faster on the steep slopes, the blade swiftly curling snow like icecream.
Skiers and boarders will "move tons of snow down the hill every day", Mr Kirkland explains.
He is meticulous - his joystick hand controlling the blade and winch constantly twitching as he aims for the correct angle.
A successfully groomed slope is achieved with experience, he says.
"You can't sit in a classroom and learn how to do this; it's a complete feeling for the machine."
The Pisten Bully's cab is decorated with a dizzying array of buttons and accompanying gauges, while the steering wheel hosts track pace, direction and tiller speed controls.
Racing against the ticking night clock to complete his tasks, Mr Kirkland manipulates the controls to lay down the smooth trails skiers and boarders expect when the morning lifts start running.
Groomers tend to avoid living in rowdy accommodation, and they need to be able to function on six hours' sleep and must enjoy working in solitude.
"You can sleep when you're dead," Mr Kirkland (29) says, chuckling.
He started out armed with a passion for heavy machinery and the enthusiasm to sit alongside groomers at Mt Hutt, learning the craft.
Building on light truck and self-laying tracks licences, he found work at Treble Cone in 2003.
It was the beginning of a six-season affair, in which Mr Kirkland leaves Wanaka each spring for his second love, California's Squaw Valley.
With snowfalls averaging 12m, compared with Wanaka's 4m, the skifield, Lake Tahoe's second-largest, requires 20 grooming machines, compared with Treble Cone's three.
Mr Kirkland says that working there constitutes a "holiday" as the heavy snowfalls mean less stockpiling of snow and more maintenance of an abundant natural resource.
One constant of a groomer's work is that it is gratifying in a strictly defined sense.
"It's very satisfying until about half an hour after we open and it's all destroyed," Mr Kirkland says, grumbling.