Porters Lodge

My family of 3 stayed over for a night here. We checked in pretty early like slightly past 2pm. We had a great lunch. It is so good that we could still get vegetarian food prepared accordingly to our request in this mountainous area. After lunch we checked out the surrounding areas. One can do mountain biking here or chill at the cafe. There are a lot of board / card games available at the cafe and even can play pool. The area is not big and we comb the whole area within one minute or two. After exploring the area, we decide to rest in our room. Peacefulness and silent were broken once our neighbors next door checked in. We could hear them going up and jumping from the double bunk bed and it just keeps going till they rest for the night. We have our dinner at the cafe again. My family was so glad they served vegetarian options here.

Great staff, very welcoming! Lovely space, delicious food, nice amenities.

We visited Porters Lodge once again on our way to the annual Coast to Coast race. This is our 5th year in a row and we've booked again for next year. Its a magic place to stay up in the mountains. Yes it's a 5 km gravel road, so look after your car or camper and DRIVE SLOW! The views are worth it. The rooms and facilities are clean and tidy and as you would expect from this kind of lodge :-) There is powered and non powered parking for motorhomes too. A good selection of beer & wine and some great pub grub. Thanks team :-) Rob, Brenda and the rest of the kayaking gang

The location of the lodge is great. Close to Castle Rock and 55 min away from Arthur’s Pass. The short dirt road allows you to feel like you are in the wilderness. We came as a family and the loader was comfortable and the staff very friendly. The kids enjoyed the board games and the game room. The food was good to top it all!

We stayed one night as a stop over - there is a little drive from the main road. They provide really nice evening meals. Heater in the room. Friendly staff. Great coffee. Gets a little wind exposed in the night which woke me up - but nothing too major. I would recommend this place.

If you are looking for a special place with you Campervan, you will find it at Porters Alpine Lodge. After 5km of gravel road you are deep in the mountains and find a magical place, great food (burger) and beer as well as a magnificent sunset and sunrise.

Incredibly rude male staff member and the 6km gravel track to get there broke our van! Weird showers with clear doors, no separate cubicles so zero privacy. No one else was staying at the same time as us and I can see why. Would not recommend you wasting your time driving there.

The lodge is located close to the skiing field in lovely surroundings (which is why I booked it), and is great for kids to play outside on the snow if the weather is good. The views are lovely from around the lodge. However, the accommodation is below the pub, small, with thin walls. Our room had no windows, apart from a skylight high up in the ceiling which leaked (a photo attached, includes the bucket to catch the water from the skylight). The only social area outside of the room was the pub. So, if you are there on busy winter afternoon/evenings it is possible you may not be able to find a place to sit and relax/play cards/read a book. It may have been a lovely private ski lodge some time ago, but turning it into a pub, accommodation for guests, and accommodation for staff is a stretch too far in my opinion I am afraid. The two small ladies showers and two ladies toilets were shared with the pub.

We booked via the Porters Pass website, entered visa card details and received a confirmation of the booking via email. It was at their lower rate (and the last day before the ski feild opened). The disadvantage/trade off of this night is that we can only ski one day. The booking system kept dropping some of the people off the group every time I moved to the next window of days to look for availability, once I confirmed and booked I noticed it had dropped half my group off again! I started up a second booking making sure to add the rest of my group on the last window this time to avoid them dropping off. I added my credit card details and confirmed this second booking. I received a confirmation email with the same price as I had booked and that was as I expected it would be from the website booking form. I emailed Porters to let them know I needed to cancel my first booking as it didn't include half my group. A few days later Porters responded to my email about my first booking and referenced my second booking and said that price they had on their website was a mistake and they will charge $150 more (the in season price) when we check out. They didn't really seem interested in issues we have had with the booking system. I guess they know it's got problems? I replied saying I didn't think that was fair we had made a booking via their website and had an email confirmation to say they are now going to charge us more for the same booking? We can't ski on the day we are booked for so the full price seems unfair randomly decide we have to pay post booking. I can't be sure but it seemed to me like the early dump of snow had changed how they saw the days before the feild opened. I have asked the person emailing me to check out the commerce commission for info on fair pricing and advertising, I get the impression from the emails they don't think this is very cool of me. I think many New Zealanders expect when they book accomodation via a NZ website that the company will be aware of their pricing, what they are advertising and make it really clear what people are paying for at the time of booking. It seems like they have not been maintaining their website during winter and I suspect others will be in the same situation as us. I would recommend to others to reach out to Commerce Commission (via the phone number on the website). I would have booked the higher rate to do get a few days on the feild but I'm so peeved at how crappy this whole process is and I can tell they will make our stay miserable. Disappointing but we are spoiled for interesting huts, accomodation and spots in Canterbury and I'm not going to spend anymore time on these guys.