"It was the best ski week so far," says the organiser of last week's 42BELOW Gay Ski Week. "Perfect snow and weather - it couldn't have been better." Over 400 travellers from Australia and around the world descended on Queentown last week for the 5th annual Gay Ski Week, with plenty of activities prepared both on and off the internationally-renowned ski slopes. Organiser Mike Sanford says the feedback from this year's guests has been overwhelmingly positive: "And it looks like this year's event will break even financially, when previous years haven't done that." Most international Gay Ski Week guests were from Australia, but there were a couple of new guys from Brazil, "and the biggie was that a lot more New Zealanders were back this year." Sanford says one of his personal highlights this time around was experiencing the dinner cruise on the TSS Earnslaw Steamship the 'Lady of the Lake' with over 100 other Gay Ski Week goers: "They had the lights going along the water lit up pink for us," he tells us. "For Friday's White-Out party we brought over DJ's and two lasers from Sydney. This year we got it right - we made the week go until Sunday, so people had a day to recover from the party, and could have a last catch up in their groups. We had a small get together in one of the restaurants in town on Saturday night, then everybody left on the Sunday." Hiring an event manager this year made a huge difference, says Sanford. "My partner and I actually got to enjoy it this year, doing more hosting, rather than running around stressed." So will Sanford be bringing Queenstown another Gay Ski Week next year? "Oh yes, definitely," he promises. Ref: GayNZ.com (m)
Credit: GayNZ.com News Staff
First published: Tuesday, 11th September 2007 - 11:45am