Fun-runners break the ice in festival town
Saturday, 10am, Queenstown Winter Festival, Queenstown
An exotic collection of characters ranging from snowflakes to dinosaurs and Captain America mingled yesterday as Queenstown warmed to the annual Winter Festival.
The 10-day spectacular began with a Golden Mile run and a street parade that attracted thousands of spectators.
Turned out, the festival wasn’t so wintry overall, with hardly any snow on the mountains and the temperature sitting above zero.
But festival-goers were in a buoyant mood, and warmest of all were the more than 100 runners who took part in the Golden Mile run minutes before the parade.
Alongside those in the sensible athlete’s kit of singlet, shorts and running shoes were runners in less practical outfits such as dinosaur costumes or business suits. No matter how exotic the outfit, the two-lap course around Queenstown wasn’t demanding.
Skifield workers Kari Spacer, Met Mowat and Diana Vaehsen said it took them $15 and a few beers to make their snowflake costumes.
They decided to join the race three hours before the start, and said their original idea had been to make chairlift outfits.
Vaehsen said she would participate in every ‘‘crazy dumb challenge’’ the festival offered – including an undie run on Wednesday.
In contrast to those festival-goers thriving on the ridiculous, Wakatipu High School athlete Aleks Cheifetz was taking the Golden Mile seriously.
For an athlete competing at a national level, the run was a fun warm-up and a chance for friends in the crowd to cheer him on.
In contrast, Kris Barrs took part with a pushchair in front of him, with a two-year-old Logan and eight-month-old Ella aboard.
‘‘She [Ella] is fast asleep down there, she’s cosy,’’ he said.
The theme of imaginative costumes continued in the subsequent street parade where local primary schools, community groups and businesses exhibited their winter wonderland floats.
The festival attractions include mountain bikes on snow, ice hockey, a comedy debate, the Birdman, dog derby, and community carnival.