Singular vision comes of age

New Zealand’s first and only cross-country skifield attracts Olympic cross-country ski teams from around the world but many New Zealanders do not even know it exists. 

The Snow Farm is now in its 30th year of operations and at a celebratory lunch last weekend a call was made to ‘‘tell your friends, tell the tourists, tell everyone how wonderful it is’’. Kerrie Waterworth reports.

It was like a choreographed scene out of a movie: overhead a clear blue sky, underfoot fresh powder snow, and as we waited for Snow Farm manager Sam Lee to reverse the Snow Farm's new state-of-the-art groomer, a line of lycra-clad cross-country skiers glided past while adults and children alike slid and squealed their way down the sledding hill on giant tyre tubes.

We were there to celebrate the Snow Farm's 30th anniversary and staff had organised a range of events and activities starting with christening the groomer "Geoff".

Mr Lee said the bright red German-made PistenBully 400 groomer was "the single-largest investment the business had made in a very, very long time". Unlike the other skifields in the Southern Lakes district, the Snow Farm is run as a not-for-profit charitable trust. The purchase of "Geoff" was made possible through grants from the Otago Community Trust and the Central Lakes Trust.

The decision to turn the Snow Farm into a charitable trust came late in its history. On the Pisa Range at 1520m above sea level, the Snow Farm was originally part of the pastoral lease property Bob Lee took up in 1924 and named Waiorau. Four years later, he married Daisy Lee and John, one of their five sons, took over the lease when he was 28.

When John married Mary Atley, of Invercargill, in 1969 the population of the Cardrona Valley was falling and there was real concern Cardrona could become a backwater for its 21 remaining residents.

At a time when skiing was still in its infancy in many parts of New Zealand, John Lee had a vision to turn the Cardrona Valley into a hub for winter sports.

He and his wife founded the Cardrona Alpine Resort, which opened in 1980, but after 30 years he changed his focus and direction from downhill skiing to cross-country.

"I read about cross-country skiing in a book and thought the geography at Pisa really lent itself to it."

However, it was a rocky road from inspiration to execution. He submitted the application in 1984 but it was 19 years before official permission was granted for the project, which included a neighbouring vehicle and tyre testing operation.

On November 30, 2012, the 298 hectares of land on which the Snow Farm sits was transferred to the Queenstown Lakes District Council and a new recreation reserve was created for cross-country skiing and summer recreational uses.

The Pisa Alpine Charitable Trust (Pact) took over the Snow Farm business and now manages the day-to-day operations.

At the 30th anniversary lunch, supporters and even those initially opposed to the development of the cross-country skifield, paid tribute to the vision of John and the passion and driving force of Mary that made it happen.

Snow Farm board chairman Samuel Belk, known as Q, said the biggest problem the Snow Farm faced today was it was still unknown.

"No-one knows about it except for a few crazies like me, the kids in Wanaka and some of the 30 schools that use it.

"New Zealand is really good at boutique weird sports, like rowing and middle-distance running, and it should be really good at cross-country skiing and it is not - partly, because we are just not known."

Mr Belk said because the Snow Farm was of such a world-class standard "the Russians came en masse before the Sochi Winter Olympics, and the Koreans and the Italians were always here".

"What I find unbelievable as a foreigner is that kids grow up here with endurance sports, but very few of them take up cross-country skiing simply because they do not know about it.

"I posit to you that if you went to Switzerland they are going to know you can cross-country race here in New Zealand at the Snow Farm but if you went to Christchurch people there are not going to know."

Pact and Snow Farm board member John Hogg agreed: "I think Wanaka is starting to realise what a little gem we have here but we still have to get Queenstown people interested."

Snow Farm board member and Lake Wanaka Trust general manager James Helmore predicted the appeal of the Snow Farm would broaden as it offered a range of different experiences.

"The Snow Farm really complements the downhill skiing at Treble Cone and Cardrona, the cat skiing at Soho Basin and the heliskiing, but its appeal is also in the stuff we all probably take for granted, that first snow experience. Half the people that come to the Snow Farm come for what we call snow play, sliding down the hill on a tube, making a snow man, feeling what snow is about. You can do as little or as much of that as you like, and then there is the snowshoeing and cross-country skiing."

Mr Helmore said as a charitable trust its aim was to make the whole area accessible and affordable for the regional community, which was why they had reduced the cost of a season pass to $150, there were season passes for dogs and the passes were marketed at the same time as the downhill skifield passes.

In his speech at the anniversary lunch Mr Belk told supporters the Snow Farm had unlimited potential in winter and in summer for hikers and mountain bikers, as a teaching facility for schools, for snowcraft and for alpine ecology and to create a high trail system to rival the Haute Route in the French and Swiss Alps.

"So, these are our plans, these are our dreams, but we need your support.

"Tell your friends, tell the tourists, tell everyone how wonderful the Snow Farm is.

"If you think this is silly and we're dreaming try telling that to John and Mary Lee. It was their vision and especially Mary's stubbornness and unwillingness to listen to naysayers, and there were many, that is the reason why we have the Snow Farm today."

Hard to imagine this dynamic, evolving world-class facility was once just high country summer grazing pasture for sheep.