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Kā Kōrero o Waikirikiri Selwyn Stories

Club ski fields in our alpine playground

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NameClub ski fields in our alpine playgroundDescriptionIt’s a saying among ‘clubbies’ that rope tows and tricky access quickly sort out the skiing fraternity. At Temple Basin, club members affectionately refer to the steep walk up to the ski field as the ‘Range Rover filter’. Those folk conditioned to chairlifts, lattes and latest-model ski gear stay put at the bottom of the track.

Club fields like Temple Basin, founded in 1929, have long attracted a select group of people with a passion for mountains. Small by commercial standards, these club fields offer unique configurations of lifts and terrains, no snaking lift queues, and if you’re lucky, your own powder stash. Our very own Mt Olympus lays claim to being the 'playground of the gods'!

Selwyn District has a distinct club field culture, with five areas owned and operated by dedicated ski clubs: Temple Basin, Broken River, Craigieburn, Cheeseman, and Mt Olympus. The exception is the Porters Alpine Resort, which is owned by PSA Capital Ltd, with key shareholders being two Australian-based Russian investors. There are plans for a large scale alpine resort, with European-style mountain village, hot pools and gondola ski-lift. More than a decade later, there have been upgrades and expansions at Porters, but the more ambitious ideas have stalled. Watch this space!

In the early days at Temple Basin and Broken River, you would have to backpack all your ski gear and supplies to the lodges. To the relief of visitors, there's now a goods lifts at Temple Basin. Broken River has an ingenuous funicular rail system which transports gear and passengers 320m through the beech forest to the accommodation lodges. Mt Cheeseman, Porters and Craigieburn have the luxury of close drive-on access. All the club ski fields have family-friendly on-mountain accommodation lodges, ski schools, and day lodges with kitchen and dining facilities.

But one aspect of club life that has endured is the rope tow. In 1952, the pioneering members of Mt Olympus installed their main rope tow in typical 'can-do' club style. A group (ten men and two women) physically carried the entire rope from Monck's Flat up the road to the field. In this collection, you can see historic images of members from Temple Basin lugging a heavy rope up the steep mountain. Once constructed the rope tow was powered by tractor engines or car engines driven to the site. The Access/Rugby tow at Broken River was named after the Rugby car engine that used to rev it into life.

For a snowboarder or skier more accustomed to chairlifts, using a 'nutcracker' rope tow is daunting. But you ain't really skied until you've belted on the jangling metal nutcracker and hauled yourself up the mountain. To make the ascent, you flip the nutcracker over a fast-moving rope – and pray you don’t get thrown off as the nutcracker moves through the pulleys. There’s no getting around the fact you need some daring and brute strength to make it to the top. But once there, you will experience awe-inspiring views of the Southern Alps/ Kā Tiritiri o te Moana and beyond. Then total freedom to choose your perfect line down the slope or head off-piste. It’s the ultimate experience for passionate skiers and snowboarders.

These days some of the clubs partially groom their slopes. But for young ‘clubbies’ skiing in the 70s, there was no better training for mountain life than grooming a slope the old fashioned way. As one young skier at Broken River ski field recalls: ‘I was staying at White Star Chalet at Broken River and we awoke to a blue powder day. It was practically waist-deep snow on the field. All the members gathered outside Palmer Lodge, and the ski instructor gave the orders. We clipped on our skis and lined up in rows. We systemically stomped down the snow so the learners had somewhere to ski. The rest of the field was left untouched. That’s the day most of us kids learnt to “ski” powder, but mostly we spent the day trying to find our buried skis!’

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