BOOK THE BUILDING

After a day on the mountain, relax here. Enjoy hearty fare and tasty desserts served up by our winter live-in chef while the roaring fire gets everyone regaling their day’s adventures - from the good to the forgettable! 

Peaceful location but close enough to everything you need. 

The north-facing lodge soaks up the day’s sunshine, and its location at Turoa Alpine Village on the outskirts of the bustling mountain township lets you wind down. But the essentials - including the epic carrot playground - and popular Ohakune cafes are only a 10-minute stroll away.

Space for everyone. 

We can fit 38 members in our spacious lodge where you can enjoy your own space, or socialise with our friendly members who have been visiting Turoa for four decades. We have six warm bunk rooms and four double bedrooms spread across two levels. 

Your gear will be toasty dry in the morning with our drying room, and there’s plenty of hot water for everyone in the communal bathrooms. Each bunk room includes a private vanity.

The kids will have fun. 

The television room and upstairs mezzanine with its pool and table tennis tables will entertain the kids, while adults can lounge around downstairs and enjoy some time out.

If the kids still have energy to burn, send them outdoors as the lodge backs onto extensive greenspace, so bring a rugby ball or rackets for the nearby tennis courts.

The RSC Chalet is located at the foot of Whakapapa in Rehua Place, approx 800 metres above The Chateau Tongariro.

One of our two lower level buildings, it was built in 1964 and sleeps 32 in bunkrooms and also has a live-in cook in residence from July school holidays to the end of the September holidays.

It provides comfortable accomodation for both small and large groups.

It is open to members to use year round and besides putting the building to good use during the ski season, many members make use of the building in summer when exploring Tongariro National Park and its surrounds, including the Tongariro Alpine Crossing or a hike to see Crater Lake.

The Chalet plays host to many of RSC's organised summer activities.

During the ski season while the Chalet sees less use than the Upper Mountain buildings at Whakapapa, it provides convienient Friday night accomodation to members staying in the Lodge or Hut for Saturday night.

Many members prefer being able to drive to the door and choose the Chalet as their prefered building, while in busy periods members may be offered a Chalet bed when the Lodge and Hut are full.

As early as 1927 RSC’s pioneering members built a small hut, known as The Storeroom, at the back of The Chateau, to serve as a junk room, a photo darkroom, a summer base and most importantly an emergency shelter for use when snow did not allow members to travel further.

Today the Chalet still serves as a road-closed shelter but better snow clearing and global warming means this happens much less often than before.

FACILITIES

The building has four bunk rooms with eight single beds, lounge, dining area, drying room, pallet fire and commercial kitchen for self-catering.

LOCATION

Here's a Google map showing the location of the Chalet:

Tucked away in the midst of the busy Whakapapa skifield at Mt Ruapehu, where thousands of people enjoy a sunny winter's day, is a tiny red hut sited near the top of the first chairlift.

It is Glacier Hut which was the first building anywhere on the upper Ruapehu snowfields when it was built in 1923. The nearest other building was at low level, 10km away down the mountain where the Chateau stands today.

The six-bunk Glacier Hut was erected by members of the Ruapehu Ski Club who carried all the materials up the hill on their backs or by pack horse.

It was hard work, especially when the hut builders were hit by unseasonal summer blizzards and had to huddle in a freezing cave in Skippers Canyon until the gale passed.

The new hut was immediately popular and ski club members often slept there both in the winter ski season and in summer when they climbed to the crater and skied down the Whakapapa Glacier.

Alpine climbers sometimes stopped there for a break on their 14km hike from the low level Whakapapa huts to the crater.

One morning there were 60 members in a climbing party who had stopped at Glacier Hut and used its kerosene stove to cook their breakfast. “You couldn't tell whether you were eating from your own fork or that of someone two feet away from you,” a climber is alleged to have said.

The famed New Zealand cartoonist (Sir) Gordon Minhinnick also had a story about Glacier Hut. He and a friend were bunking down on a cold night when there came a knock at the door, and upon opening it they faced a horse with a woolen beanie on his head.

The horse's owner turned out to be a prominent ski club member, Horace Holl, who wanted to stay for the night. The trio bedded the horse down an the lee side of the hut and retired to their bunks. So why the beanie? The horse, said Holl, had earache.

Glacier Hut enjoyed 13 years in magnificent isolation until the Ruapehu Ski Club built a larger 12-bunk hut nearby in 1936. Even larger ski lodges as well as chairlifts and T-bars began to appear in later years and these now surround the scene.

In the wake of this the Tongariro National Park Board declared the tiny old hut to be an eyesore and demanded its removal.

Ruapehu Ski Club members fervently resisted this and after a campaign by the ski club that lasted 25 years, Glacier Hut was officially gazetted by the Historic Places Trust in 1993 as a Category One Historic Place – the highest category.

Today one half of the hut is furnished as it was in the 1920s and the other half is maintained by the ski club as a skiing museum containing vintage ski clothing and ski equipment, most of it pre-war.

Pride of place goes to a pair of 101 year-old skis which were used in July 1913 when two railway clerks, Bill Mead and Bernard Drake, were the first people to ski anywhere in the North Island .

Frustrated with their inability to make progress around Tongariro National Park in winter, they imported two pairs of wooden skis from Switzerland and tried them out at Ruapehu.

Just four days after their first day of skiing, Mead and Drake founded the Ruapehu Ski Club which today has 1000 members and owns four large accommodation buildings at Ruapehu, as well as Glacier Hut.

After Drake was badly injured in World War One, he did not ski again and donated his original skis and his single ski stick (they used just one) to the ski club.

One last tale. In the 1930s a ski club member at the AGM queried the balance sheet asset listing of Glacier Hut, as he had visited the site and could not find it, due to a heavy snow cover. “It is,” replied the Treasurer, “A frozen asset.”

++ The wee hut was slightly enlarged in the 1940s. A second window and a new porch were added.

Alan Graham (RSC)

Here's a Google map of Hutt Flat, showing the Hut, the Lodge and Glacier Hut:

The RSC Hut is situated 40 metres uphill from the Lodge at an altitude of 1780 meters, so it is 80 metres from the top of the first chairlift, with an easy downhill ski or board from the front door down to the second chairlift.

The Hut sleeps 32 in bunkrooms of eight bunks, and has an in-house cook (July-Oct). All accommodation and living areas are on the one level.

The basement area houses an area to store skis and boards, lockers, the drying room and supply stores.

There is no TV but it does have a pool table, ideal for teenagers staying in both Hut and Lodge.

The Hut's smaller size provides a warm and friendly environment and it is popular with members looking for a quieter stay.

This building is L-shaped with the lounge/kitchen as one wing and the bunkrooms as the other wing.

It was built in 1960 with materials coming up from road-end by tractor (there was a chairlift by then but it was broken down at the time).

The lounge sits on the site of a previous Hut which was built in 1936 with 24 bunks.

Like the Lodge, the building is fully electric and everyone in residence does a daily rostered duty.

A member is designated by the Club as leader for each night, and he/she makes up the roster.

FACILITIES

Four bunk rooms with 32 single beds. Lounge, pool table, games area, open fire, wax and drying rooms, and winter live-in cook providing all meals. Only open during the ski season.

LOCATION

Here's a Google map of Hutt Flat, showing the Hut, the Lodge and Glacier Hut: