The hidden huts transforming ski touring in the Southern Alps
Sunday, 5 July 2026
Lou Sanson is a former director-general of the Department of Conservation and has spent most of his life exploring and enjoying the South Island’s wild places.
Glenmore Station is one of those incredible places I had always heard about but never visited. Driving through the Mackenzie the wonderful vista of the Liebig and Gamack ranges follows you all the way from Tekapo to Pukaki, and occasionally Aoraki/Mt Cook pops over the top.
The wonderful dryland tussock landscapes covering the entire basin all the way back to the Cass River in the distance – along with the delightful crested grebes swimming around Lake Alexandrina – are mostly all Glenmore Station, probably one of New Zealand’s most scenic high country stations.
Curiously, the mouth of the Cass River is one of the best sites for the endangered black stilts/kakī that feed on invertebrates in braided rivers.
Mostly, though, visitors get to see Glenmore Station from the top of Mt John above Tekapo.
I had heard through the climbing and ski-touring communities rave reviews of a new venture of four new huts in the Gamack Range high above the Cass River, specifically built for ski touring. It wasn’t long before we planned our first mission to see what all the acclaim was about.
Lady Emily and the Bad Decision
Meeting Glenmore Station owners Will and Emily Murray you instantly connect – here are a couple who just love mountains, ski touring and Southern Alps adventures.
Will is a fourth-generation owner of the 19,000-hectare Mackenzie Basin high country station that has been in the Murray family for 108 years. First farmed in 1857, it now is used to raise Angus beef cattle and Merino sheep.
About 15 years ago Will decided to combine his farming operation with his love of ski touring and build a cosy little ski touring hut in the head of the Cass River. He named it after his wife.
The Lady Emily Hut was built in 2013 for the couple’s personal use, along with a bunch of friends who shared their love of alpine ski touring. In Will’s words, “it accidentally became a monster”.
As I well know from years of tramping and alpine skiing, new huts in our backcountry become magnets, and as word got around there were numerous requests to use the new Lady Emily Hut. Within a year, Will and Emily were extending the hut, and such was the demand for back country ski touring they built their second alpine hut, Falcon’s Nest, in 2017.
Such was the increasing interest in the Cass Valley that the couple then proceeded to upgrade their 1930s musterers huts. 4WD access up the river was easy and keen skiers could also use Mackenzie Helicopters to get to the new Falcon’s Nest hut.
In a stroke of pure genius in 2020, Will and Emily then decided to build the highest whisky bar in the world.
On a stunning ridgeline at 2000m set among towering peaks they built the tiny Bad Decision Hut to house the best collection of whiskies you could ever hope for, outside the Scottish Highlands.
It was named Bad Decision as, in Will’s words, “it is always too hard to have just one whisky, and things can go wayward quickly after the second or third wee dram”.
Fortunately the route is all downhill on the most stunning ski slope possible to Lady Emily Hut. The couple brought in Whisky Galore in Christchurch as a key partner and all booked guests are invited to select their whisky at Whisky Galore and have it flown in during the June “whisky run”.
There are more than 100 bottles stacked on the whisky shelf, and only one party in the last five years was enjoying it so much that they drank someone else’s tipple. They promptly flew in a replacement bottle. Don’t you just love the pure honesty and respect of users of our backcountry huts!
Ski touring pioneers
Immediately above the hut is the famed Scorpion route, named by Gottlieb Braun-Elwert, the developer of New Zealand’s first private ski touring hut, the Rex Simpson Hut, in 1985, sitting high above Lake Tekapo and often frequented by former prime minister Helen Clark on her ski touring trips.
True pioneers of alpine ski touring, the Murrays are taking it to the next level. All huts have firewood and one even has an outside spa pool. Their latest hut, O’Leary’s, which is the highest, was built in 2022 and often has some of the best snow in the Gamack Range.
Cass Valley Ski Touring now has 34 beds available to book, and when bookings open a year ahead in August all four huts book out very quickly, such is the interest in ski touring. Nearly all are Kiwis and many choose to visit with alpine guides. The company does no advertising, it is all word of mouth. The couple’s children, Angus, Greta and Ben, have become avid ski tourers as a result of their parents’ interest.
Will and Emily are very much a team, utilising the summer months to do the neverending list of maintenance on the huts, cut and fly in firewood, spring clean and deal with the many emailed questions.
Emily says the number of younger people now coming is incredible and exciting for the future. You certainly earn your turns skinning up the slopes, but the beauty of the mountains and tranquillity complete the experience. Of course, safety is always paramount, and groups that do not have the required skills are encouraged to take a qualified guide with them on their trip.
The four days we had at Glenmore Station, planned months ahead, turned out to have a severe weather warning for our second day. We had all arrived at Tekapo from Wellington, Christchurch, Lumsden and Auckland – the consultation was quick: “Let’s go, we haven’t had a decent storm in a hut for years.”
Graeme headed back into town to buy stuff to make scones, pikelets and mulled wine to make the storm go quicker. The plan was one load in by helicopter from Tekapo and one by 4WD up the Cass River, knowing that with a flooded river we may get stuck. That made the trip better, as we hadn’t been stuck in the mountains for at least five years! The trip was getting better by the hour.
Whisky and port under the stars
Our focus was on The Scorpion, undoubtedly one of Canterbury’s best day-long ski- touring trips. Perfect snow and blue skies without a breath of wind – we couldn’t believe our luck!
Whisky is such a tradition. You will always remember where and who you were with when you have a stunning single malt. At Bad Decision you will never forget, such is the unique experience of location and whisky combined. As Will says: “It is hard to just have the one dram when visiting this hut.” We noticed the same.
Late evening light, getting colder crammed into a tiny hut surrounded by 100 different whiskies, a huge amount of laughing and body heat warms the hut. With light failing, out we go into the freezing air to ski the 5km on most gorgeous spring corn snow down to Lady Emily Hut.
Three of us fall over within five minutes, then we get into it. Stunning slopes, fluid turns and an incredible sunset over the Southern Alps – it really is the best day skiing in the mountains ever!
Sitting around a roaring fire at Lady Emily with roast lamb and lashings of mint sauce we all reflect: “Was that really real today?”
The night is so still and clear that we set up a candlelit dinner on the big slab table outside the hut just to enjoy the late purple light and the stars switching themselves on. Soon the sky is ablaze with the Milky Way as we finish a stunning bottle of port and Cuban cigars to round out a magic day in the Alps.
During the night the rain arrives as predicted, and we awaken to the lovely sound of rain on the roof in a mountain hut as, “snug as a bug in a rug”.
Quickly a fire is roaring and we spend the day reminiscing of times stuck in huts or rock bivouacs in the Southern Alps as “Huey’ sends it down.
Flashes of lightning and thunder enhance the whole experience as a batch of hot date scones come out of the camp oven over the fire. With lashings of butter, cream and jam we extol the virtues of having a pit day in the mountains.
A bottle of good single malt Scotch completes the day after a huge meal cooked over the fire of roast mutton birds/tītī and grilled vegetables. For a number of us, eating mutton birds in the mountains has become a special treat – none of our wives like them cooked in our homes!
The next day is a bluebird spring day. Snow around the hut has vanished in the overnight rain but it is only a 15-minute walk to put our skis back on and skin up Tin Hut Stream. The head of the valley is stunning, with high rock buttresses and beautiful skiing slopes. We remove our climbing skins and enjoy snow, a little wet but easily skied.
Alpine magic
It has been a superb few days in the Cass Valley as we pack up and clean the hut before walking an hour down to our 4WDs parked at Tin Hut on the Cass River.
Spring has definitely arrived on the valley floor. The willows are awash with new green leaves, the snow melt makes for some challenging fords, and the warm spring sun feels so good on our backs as we navigate our way down the river.
All too soon we are back out at Glenmore Station and pop in to say a huge thanks to Will and Emily for having the vision to create New Zealand’s first network of backcountry huts specifically designed for ski touring. Emily informs us that the following winter is already heavily booked, such is the growth in ski mountaineering and the unique experience that the Murrays have created.
We all agree that we will be back to enjoy this little-known piece of Southern Alps magic, one enabled by a farming couple who had the vision and aspiration to create such an incredible recreational experience in their back yard, the Cass River.
I later get to meet up with Tom Evatt in Christchurch. He is a huge fan of Will and Emily’s work and innovation in the backcountry. Tom has built on this innovation with a new alpine hut, Erewhon Hut, at Mt Potts near Lake Clearwater. Using best-guess climate modelling, Tom’s estimate is that 1700m will be the new 1500m mark for skiing in the Southern Alps. Most club skifields are at 1500m.
He has just opened the Erewhon Hut, which has two huts sleeping six each, with solar power, inside toilets and running water nearby. His belief is many of our huts have got stuck in a 1960s design paradigm and that increasingly New Zealanders are looking for something different that is bookable, focused on family or group use, easy access and warmth.
Seeing what cycleways have done for small towns he sees new comfortable mountain huts doing similar for farms and little settlements. He has negotiated a concession on public conservation land that has cycle access, and users can use the helicopter at Mesopotamia Station but ski and walk out. For his huts you book a cabin, not a bed.
His intention is to make it easy for first-time backcountry skiers by creating new opportunities.
Tom has concessions approved by the Department of Conservation for two further alpine huts in the Ben Ohau range and the Two Thumb Range. Both sites look incredible, with amazing views and alpine lakes, and with new alpine huts could potentially attract hundreds of new backcountry adventurers.
Every detail has been thought through, and Tom points out that DOC is not going to be building new alpine huts, so advances in innovation should really be coming from the private sector. Erewhon Hut bookings open in November and are 85% booked by Christmas.
As a former DOC director-general in charge of nearly 1000 backcountry huts, for me it is fantastic to see the innovation now going on by farmers, backcountry ski enthusiasts, engineers and architects who still believe in the excitement of sleeping in an alpine hut in a storm and waking to the best day’s skiing on untracked powder you have ever had in your life. The pure magic of sunsets and sunrises at altitude, but staying in a heated hut!
I can understand why so many Southern Alps backcountry enthusiasts are now making their way to these fantastic new places that are now so popular they don’t even need to advertise.