NZ club fields

I first heard about the New Zealand club fields in 1994 from some crazed kiwis. They mentioned names like Broken River, Craigieburn, Mt Olympus and Temple Basin. And they described rugged ski resorts operating old school rope tows. No people (well other than a few kiwi mountain types). Steeps. No grooming.

Unfortunately it took me until 2002 to make my first trip. Unfortunate because skiing the club fields is an amazing and honest skiing experience.

The club fields are small ski resorts owned at a community level. And unlike the commercial resorts in NZ they have lodges up in the snow. All pretty rustic with shared bunk rooms and communal meals.

(Lodges and base at Mt Olympus)

A clarifying experience when skiing the club fields are the rope tows. Known as ‘nutcracker’ lifts they are about the most basic way to get up a mountain. You wear a belt with a nutcracker attached (picture an oversized metal nutcracker) that you manually flick over the rope and hold shut with your hand… Low on the fun factor until you get it worked out. Then it’s actually pretty awesome.

The vibe is generally very laid back at all the fields. Maximum of 50-100 people on any day. Bob Marley playing on speakers at the lodge. Lots of hiking and hunting for different lines.

For me, the most spectacular experiences I’ve had are the steep, consistent fall line of Craigieburn (so good and long) and night skiing at Mt Olympus under moonlight (just ridiculously fun and surreal).

Don’t go if you are the precious type. But go if you want one of the most genuine skiing experiences in the world.

Why ski Japan?

Pretty simple really. It snows. And even when you think it’s not snowing, it really is because there are always fresh tracks to be had. Oh, and at most resorts there are no lift queues. On my recent trip the longest wait for a lift was 3 minutes. And that was on a Saturday.

I’ve spent much of my adult life planning ski trips, going on ski trips and desperately hoping for powder days. I’ve lined up at 7am more times than I can remember to make sure I make the most of a new snowfall. Perhaps most memorably I did this a bunch of times at Les Grand Montets (Chamonix, France) in 1999. Standing in the gondola queue with guys who wore helmets (this was 1999!), carried ropes and ice axes, and looked like they really didn’t want to be stuffed around. I once tripped getting out of the gondola in the race to the chair and was genuinely worried for my life as 80 pairs of ski boots went over the top of me…

Not so in Japan. Based on an unstructured, poorly designed study (my three trips over there), I’d estimate that 80-90% of days in January and February would be shin deep at a minimum. For those of you who have skied in Canada you will know how ridiculous that is.

In short, Japan offers the following:

• a serious amount of snow
• lots of resorts including many you won’t hear of if you don’t drive around and have a look
• very few people skiing the powder and fewer who really like tree skiing
• great tree skiing!
• tasty, tasty food and beer
• friendly people

Japan doesn’t seem to have the rocky, steep terrain of North America, Europe or New Zealand. The volcanic geology of Japan seems to make for smoother, lower angle mountains. But I have skied steep, challenging trees in knee deep snow with virtually NO other skiers on the mountain.

(Photo credits to Jonno)