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Ski Club

The Year 1957 marks a milestone in the history of the Ski Club with the near completion of a hut on Mt. Ruapehu which has been built by us in conjunction with the Auckland University Ski Club.

Although in the last three years the Club has run several very successful trips to Temple Basin above Arthur's Pass and to Ruapehu it has become increasingly difficult to obtain accommodation in any of the existing ski huts on Ruapehu especially. With the increasing popularity of the sport, other clubs have a full membership and have their huts fully booked by their own members almost every weekend during the ski season.

The need for our own hut was realised as early as 1952, when the hut fund was instigated, and from then on the idea grew and the site and plans were finalised, thanks to the energy and hard work of Bernie O'Shea, our Hut Officer and former President, and Tom Turney, a former club member, now of the Auckland Club. With the invaluable assistance of Denis Oldham, a senior architectural student at Auckland, the plan of the hut was drawn up and approved, and the cost estimated at £1200. By the end of 1955 each club had raised its quota of £600, by loan and by individual effort"—not an easy task for a university club"—and since that time parties from both clubs have been working on the hut at every available opportunity under the able direction of Bill Hamilton, a consultant engineer from the Auckland club, and as this article goes to press, a year and a half from the first working party, the outer shell of the hut and the inner partitions are completed. The final result will be a hut constructed of hollow concrete blocks to give maximum warmth and fire resistance, with an aluminium roof. The living-cum-dining-room-cum-kitchen faces out away from the mountain, while the two bunkrooms, sleeping 16 people in each, are situated at either end of the hut, with the washroom and the drying room and the ski room (a recent addition) at the rear.

The immediate task is the completion of the hut interior; a recent Ski Club "kitchen tea" yielded much valuable equipment, from pressure cookers to wooden spoons, but the larger (and more expensive) articles such as mattresses have yet to be purchased. Other projects for the future

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are an underground water storage tank, also electricity for cooking and heating as well as for lighting.

The carefully drawn up and entirely satisfactory agreement between the two clubs provides for equal distribution of profits accruing, also for efficient management of the hut, and its members, so that the best possible relations should continue to exist with regard to use of the hut. It is hoped that within the next few years we may be able to use the portion of the hut profits allocated to the Ski Club for its own use to purchase more and better ski equipment which till now has not been possible to any great extent.

In building this combined hut, not only are we establishing a link between ourselves and the Auckland University Ski Club, but we are offering our own club members every possible opportunity to enjoy, and become proficient in, a wonderful sport, and at the same time are proving ourselves to be a fully-equipped club in its own right, on a level with every other ski club in New Zealand.