Our History

From Danseys Pass to the St Marys Range - nearly ninety years of club skiing

The Waitaki Ski Club was founded in 1938, making it one of the older ski clubs in New Zealand. In its earliest years the club skied on the slopes around Danseys Pass, well before Awakino was ever considered - club skiing in this part of the country started somewhere else entirely.

After the Second World War, the club relocated to the St Marys Range above Awakino Station, where the field remains today. Long-time member Craig Third remembers the details well: the corrugated-iron Nissen hut that still stands at the base of the field today arrived from Kurow in pieces, on the back of an old GMC. "It was super windy that day and a bit scary," he recalls. "We spent many weekends digging foundation holes and preparing to put it back together."

About as close as a photo gets to Craig's account: an old ex-army GMC grinding up the same access road with a load of building materials on the back.

The same truck (and a Land Rover close behind) partway up the hill - give or take a bit of erosion, this is a road you'd still recognise today.

Also from the same collection: a bus that carried more of the crew up on a separate trip, and the almost-finished hut. Pictured outside the hut: Jim McNulty, Dave Bisson, Gerry McCabe and Spencer Church among others. Photos courtesy of the Church family, via Mark Church - thank you to everyone in the Facebook group who helped put names to faces.

As Kris Logan tells it, back when nearby Oamaru was still "dry" (no alcohol sales on Sundays), club members would swing by Georgetown to pick up beer on the way through - a good weekend on the field, then back to work Monday.

We're still filling in the gaps around exactly how and when this all came together - if you've got old club records, photos, or first-hand accounts from the Danseys Pass years or the early relocation, we'd love to hear from you.

The First Hut

The club's mark on the door doesn't leave much doubt whose hut this was. Alongside it: a group photo outside the hut, three members out on skis, and what looks like a sign being put up on the tussock - if anyone can tell us what it said, we'd love to know.

The Main Tow, the Learner Tow, and the One That Got Away

For years the field ran three rope tows: the main tow, a smaller learner tow at the base, and a ridge tow reaching higher into the terrain above. The ridge tow has since fallen into disrepair - it sat on genuinely steep, hard-to-access ground, and (with the benefit of hindsight) it was originally run off a petrol engine, which was an awkward choice at altitude when every other piece of equipment on the field runs on diesel. It's still marked as the "Former Ridge Tow" on our trail map, a quiet nod to its retirement. Today the field runs on what everyone affectionately calls "one and a half" tows - one full-sized main tow, and one smaller learner tow at the base.

The main tow in action, and the base building holding up in a full snowstorm - decades before today's setup, but instantly recognisable. The skiers pictured bottom-right are Mrs McNulty, Gerry McCabe and Spencer Church.

Getting on the rope tow, with Bryan, Logan, Miguel, Ian Morris and Roy waiting their turn. The rope has needed its share of running repairs over the years - as one former member put it when a section looked like it might give way, the fix was always to call "Mad Mike" to splice a new length in.

Club Racing in the Nineties

For a stretch in the 1990s the field ran proper slalom races down the main slope, gates and all - not a bad effort for a club field with no chairlift and a volunteer patrol. Ray Telfor, Barry Aiken and Chris Tschepp were regulars through the gates, and not every run ended upright.

Ray Telfor mid-turn through the gates on the main slope.

Chris Tschepp on the deck after catching an edge - as one member noted at the time, "a pretty normal sight with Chris, his new fat skis might help!"

Lunch on the field between races, with Bryan, Logan, Marcel Driessins, Roy, Nairi, Ray Telfor, Ian Morris, Grey Budge, Barry Aiken and Chris Tschepp all present and accounted for.

The Michael Nother Memorial Hut

In 1977, Jim Nother of Kurow built a hut on the field in memory of his son Michael Nother - an enthusiastic skier, tramper and hang glider who died in 1975 at just 27. The hut has served as a gathering place for skiers and mountaineers ever since, and the club has been restoring it in recent years thanks to volunteer hours and public donations. You can read more about that restoration, and see the hut's original construction, on the Nother Hut page.

A Field That Runs on Volunteers

Little about Awakino has ever come easily. The lodge, the tows, and the hut have all been built and kept running by club members giving up their weekends - a tradition that continues today, with every able-bodied member expected to pitch in at work parties. One government tourism report from 2004 recorded the field open seven weekends that year, with an average of around 20 people on the field each day - numbers that will sound very familiar to anyone who has skied there more recently. Uncrowded, unhurried, and largely unchanged: that's very much still the point.

Fun fact: the current lodge record is 15 people in the outdoor spa at once. If your group thinks it can beat that, we want to hear about it - and yes, we expect photographic evidence.

If you've got photos, stories or corrections that belong on this page - particularly anything from the early Danseys Pass or relocation years - get in touch. This page is very much a work in progress, and we'd rather get the history right than leave it half-told.