Hamish McCrostie – ONZM - Snowman

He’s forged himself a highly successful career in snow, his expertise in demand worldwide, all due to pursuing a passion for skiing 50 years ago, which became a passion for snow safety.

Hamish McCrostie never once thought his original job as a Coronet Peak ski patroller in the late 1970s would lead to a remarkable international career, definitely not a New Year Honour. A very humbled Hamish was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in January 2024 for services to outdoor recreation and search and rescue.

It was all well deserved after countless hours helping Police with search and rescue operations in avalanche-prone backcountry and training up a highly skilled avalanche management team during almost 20 years managing The Remarkables and Coronet Peak Ski Areas locally.

He helped develop the leading avalanche programme at The Remarkables when it opened in 1985 – making a major contribution nationally as a member of New Zealand Mountain Safety Council’s Avalanche Advisory Committee until 2010. “We bought a Canadian expert out and set up a safety training partnership with the Canadians. I worked there with him, gaining my qualifications, and set about replicating the education and training they were doing,” he says. Hamish was also instrumental in setting up the Mountain Safety Council’s national avalanche risk reporting system, which developed into the NZ Avalanche Advisory.

Just a few years in as a ski patroller Hamish teamed up with Whakapapa patrol director Ian Goodison to start the Pre-Hospital Emergency Care qualification for patrollers, now a national qualification for the adventure tourism and outdoor recreation industries. “I started without even basic first aid, so we approached the National Ambulance Officers Training School in Auckland,” Hamish says. “They had a Fire Service qualification and developed that into a course for us. The first pilot was trialled in Queenstown in 1988, then we ran it throughout New Zealand.”

“We’d put ourselves at risk sometimes skiing into high-risk areas to test the snow stability using explosives and Avalaunchers, but it was all calculated and managed.”

It wasn’t all serious work. Hamish recalls streaking on skis, with other patrollers, from the top to bottom of Coronet Peak once. “We had to have the utmost faith in our mate who brought our clothes down the mountain,” he grins.

On skis from age 3, Hamish grew up in Invercargill attending Southland Boys’ High, holidaying in Queenstown, skiing in winter and water skiing, boating and fishing in summer, his parents keen skiers.

“We’d be lighting fires on the beach and eeling. Mum (Betty, now 96) always said we’d come home when we were hungry. Sergeant Maloney gave me a boot up the bum a few times as I was fleeing the scene,” Hamish grins.

His dad wanted him to follow him into real estate, but Hamish headed to the Gold Coast surfing in 1977, then Queenstown in 1978 for two winters working in Bill Lacheny’s Ski Shop, summers at the freezing works.

Then in 1979 Tekapo Skifield owner and former Austrian ski racer Karl Burtcher Senior offered Hamish a ski patrol job. “I learned a lot about managing snow from him. He really piqued my interest.”

By 1980 Hamish was ski patrolling at Coronet Peak, honing his passion for snow dynamics.

That year Danes Rafting founder Dale Gardiner asked him to be a summer river guide where Hamish learned from skilled American guides, progressing from the Kawarau and Shotover rivers to the Landsborough for 11 summers.

He remembers well the awful night the new Coronet Peak base building went up in flames in 1986. “We all raced out there from Eichardt’s. It was pretty dramatic.”

It took a really poor Coronet Peak snow season in 1988 to convince the Mount Cook Company to install 21 snowmaking guns. “That changed the whole dynamic allowing us to open in mid-June instead of mid-July. That was pretty significant.”

Remarkables Ski Patrol director from 1985, Hamish spent a summer in Japan, setting up a ski resort safety programme, and worked in Europe before being appointed fulltime Remarkables Ski Area manager. Freestyle skiing was just emerging internationally then, so Hamish initiated development of terrain parks and halfpipes before becoming Coronet Peak manager in 2007, until 2012.

After a brief stint in real estate, he developed cat skiing operations in Soho Basin for mate John Darby before being approached to manage and advise on China’s Secret Garden Ski Resort, helping develop the Freestyle venue for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. He was there when Covid broke out in January 2020. “It was pretty freaky driving through deserted village roadblocks and being checked by guys in full hazmat gear.”

He endured 18 weeks of quarantines from 2020 to 2022.

Since then he’s consulted on the Saudi Arabian Trojena Ski Resort project, with its planned massive all-weather snowmaking systems, working to duplicate what he did in China for the Trojena 2029 Asia Winter Games. That NEOM project was halted late last year for a complete cost review, and while Hamish is still consulting, he’s pretty happy fly fishing on a river in semi-retirement in Havelock North just now.