Manawatu¯’s skiing history
The skiing was for hardy types down the rolling spurs before legging it back to the top.
Rangiwahia, up north of A¯ piti, is all but a ghost of a rural hamlet in the northern Manawatu¯ backblocks these days. But in the 1930s it provided the most accessible skiing in the North Island and some of the best views across to Ruapehu, Taihape and Taranaki.
Skiers from all walks of life would come from Wellington and Hawke’s Bay and mix with Manawatu¯ folk at what was then one of the finest natural skiing grounds in the country.
The Rangiwahia Ski Club came into being in 1935, New Zealand’s second official ski club. Because of rough, gravel access roads, the Whakapapa and Turoa fields at Ruapehu hadn’t been developed, while Mt Taranaki was considered steep terrain.
After World War II, the more gentle slopes of Rangiwahia remained popular because petrol rationing limited long-distance driving.
Rangiwahia farmer John Oakden was secretary and would post 200 newsletters to club members and send snow reports to Radio 2YA.
Now retired to Feilding aged 89, while many locals were playing rugby or deer stalking, he loved traipsing for 90 minutes up through the bush to the skiing on his doorstep
The ski runs are on ridges radiating from the 12-kilometre-long Whanahuia Range, which reaches a peak at Maungamahue of 1661 metres, overlooked by the Ruahine Range.
In its heyday, Rangiwahia had a rugby club with two teams, tennis courts, a golf club, which survived until 1997, a dairy factory, churches, a hall, a post office and a school, which once housed 110 children and which has since been bulldozed into a gully. At Frank Heise’s hotel, skiers could hire boots and skis, until it burned to the ground in 1958.
Relief workers in the 1930s Depression cut the first track via a suspension bridge up to a rusty musterers’ tin hut on the alpine tops at 1327m. It was later expanded by the skiers into the ski club hut and rebuilt by the Palmerston North Tramping and Mountaineering Club in 1967.
Today the track has an arched wooden bridge leading up to a 12-bunk Department of Conservation hut, built in 1984 and adorned with impressions of skis from yesteryear.
When Oakden first climbed up to the ski field, the bush was horribly wide open, decimated by red deer and the tussock had been eaten out. It revived only when deer cullers were sent in and later when 1080 poison was dropped. Big trees had been killed by possums.
The skiers obtained an army Indian motorbike, removed the engine, took it to the snowline, mounted it on skis and operated a mechanised rope tow on the slopes above ‘‘Rangi’’ Hut. A greater feat was winching a bulldozer backwards from tree to tree up a steep spur. The native tussock was rooted out and dozed aside to give easier access to the back peaks and to level the rounded slopes so the snow didn’t settle on top of the large clumps of tussock. After a heavy dump, the snow bedded down hard instead of sitting on the tussock and melting more quickly. The skiing was for hardy types down the rolling spurs before legging it back to the top. With its alpine coastal climate, it is exposed to strong southwest storms and that, along with the the low cloud, has mostly put paid to heliskiing ventures.
The pioneering skiers moulded their own skis from karri, an Australian hardwood boiled in a copper, and affixed sealskin to stop the skis from slipping backwards. There was never a fatality, only a few broken legs and twisted ankles. One time a search party was sent out to rescue a woman who became lost in the open tussock. To get help for accidents took at least half a day – it was an hour’s drive to Feilding alone.
The club faded away in the 1950s when Feilding skiers decided they wanted a lodge on Mt Ruapehu, where there was more reliable snow. They started Summit Skiers, a Manawatu¯ club that endures at Whakapapa, but the skifield at Rangiwahia remains, even if back to near-natural state, and occasional enthusiasts still ski there.
When the club folded, Oakden was convinced global warming was starting even back then – the snow wasn’t as reliable as it once was. In his youth he remembered snow being up to the height of farm fences before temperatures gradually became less frigid. In the late 1880s, when the land was covered in bush and was wet, sheep would ice up and perish from the cold.
Mangaweka’s Austie Hayward started skiing at Rangiwahia and went on to be the assistant manager of the first New Zealand ski team to the Oslo Winter Olympics in 1952, where he was also the team flagbearer.
Meanwhile, the flattened ski runs are still visible to trampers and hunters who visit ‘‘Rangi’’, some of the more unusual relics of Manawatu¯ sporting history.