Porters Ski Area
Porters Ski Area is a ski area in New Zealand. It sits at about 1,546 m above sea level. The mapped ski area covers about 2.6 km². Within 2.5 km of the centre, the map shows 25 marked runs and 6 lifts, totalling about 14 km of piste. Over the last three winters the ERA5 reanalysis gives it 127 cm of snowfall a season, 1843rd (tied) of the 3,112 ski areas we measure worldwide. The model runs well below what resorts report, so the ranking is the meaningful part rather than the centimetre figure. 9 other ski areas lie within 120 km. Snow figures and the Powder Score are recalculated every day.
Elevation of the ski area’s centre point, taken from a digital elevation model. It is not the base-to-summit range.
We do not show a snow depth here. The weather model we use reports snow lying on the ground — it knows nothing about grooming or snowmaking, and it is not the base depth a ski area publishes. In Japan we can check our figures against 234 weather stations. Outside Japan there is nothing to check them against, so we do not print a number we have not verified.
Score breakdown
Powder Score v1.0.0
7-day outlook
| Date | Snow | Temp | Wind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🌧️ 27 Sept | 12.5 | -9.3 / 2.9 | 16 |
| ☁️ 28 Sept | 0 | -10.2 / -0.4 | 8.9 |
| ☁️ 29 Sept | 0 | -6.4 / 6.4 | 6.9 |
| ☁️ 30 Sept | 0 | -4.5 / 8.1 | 12.3 |
| ☁️ 1 Oct | 0 | -2.9 / 8.7 | 12.2 |
| ☁️ 2 Oct | 0 | 1 / 9.2 | 18.8 |
| ☁️ 3 Oct | 0 | 2.2 / 11.4 | 8.6 |
Runs and lifts
Counted from the runs and lifts drawn on OpenStreetMap, within the boundary of the ski area. These are not the resort’s own published figures.
Run map
The shape of the mountain
Which way the slopes face
76% of the vertical on the runs descends to the north or east. Those slopes get the least sun, so the snow lasts longer.
By difficulty
Lift types
- T-bar3
- Drag lift1
- Chairlift1
- Magic carpet1
See past trail maps on Skimap.org ↗
Source: OpenSkiMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0). How finely ski areas are drawn varies by region, so treat the counts as indicative. Vertical is the difference between the highest and lowest points of the mapped runs and lifts.
How much snow it gets
Measured by us across 3,112 ski areas by one identical method. These are not the resort’s own published figures.
The tick marks the median across the 395 Japanese ski areas. All four bars run the same way — longer is better.
The quality score deliberately excludes how much snow falls — it uses temperature, frequency, rain and wind. Snowing a lot and snowing well are different things.
Compared with what is nearby
Within 50 km straight line. Measured the same way, so the ranks compare directly. Ski areas a few kilometres apart share a weather grid cell and can return the same figure.
| Ski area | Distance | Seasonal snowfall | World rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mount Olympus Ski Area | 9.0 km | 145 cm | 1639 |
| Mount Cheeseman Ski Area | 13 km | 136 cm | 1744 |
| Broken River Ski Area | 17 km | 136 cm | 1744 |
| Craigieburn Valley Ski Area | 19 km | 136 cm | 1744 |
| Mount Hutt Ski Area | 26 km | 155 cm | 1512 |
When it falls, and how winters differ
Month by month
Month by month, the most snow falls in July. September brings 59% of July’s snowfall. That is a steeper fall than the median for ski areas in New Zealand (79%): the snow here is concentrated early in the season. In amount, September brings 24 cm, less than the median of 32 cm.
Map
Where it sits relative to nearby resorts. For a piste map, see the official site.
More places to look
Updated: 26 Sept 2026, 23:28