snowy mountains by Christchurch

I flew back to New Zealand from the US a couple days ago. My flight from Los Angeles to Auckland was an hour and a half late, so I missed the non-stop flight from Auckland to Dunedin that I'd been scheduled to take. So I had to change planes in Christchurch. I was so surprised by the snowy mountains I could see form the Chch airport, so I took some pictures of them. You may remember my earlier posts about the fact that Christchurch is located in the middle of the Canterbury plain, a long plain that reaches its widest point at Christchurch. The plain is bordered to the east by the ocean and to the west by mountains. The airport at Chch is located to the west of the town, so it's closer to the mountains than the rest of the city. I'd heard that the South Island had had some cold weather in my absence, and the snow in the mountains makes that evident.