The Ohau Lift Company wasn’t formed until 2023, but the story begins far earlier. Bill and Sue Schmidt grew up on opposite sides of a small lake in Michigan in the ‘50s. Immediately after graduating from college they married and moved to Hawaii where Bill worked at Pearl Harbor as a mechanical engineer for the US Navy’s Sub-Safe program. After several enjoyable years of island life they quit their nascent careers and decided to sail to New Zealand for a ski season.
This adventure took them across the South Pacific in 1971. Upon landfall, they quickly discovered the family-run ski area at Lake Ohau and offered their services to the Eames family in exchange for room, board, and skiing. Sue worked in the lodge and Bill kept the lifts running. Lake Ohau was (and still is), such an enchanting place that the planned single ski season turned into seven. In that time Bill designed and built a new lift for the Eames, which at the time was the longest T-bar in New Zealand. It was powered by a 12 cylinder Rolls-Royce engine, utilized a hydraulic drive, and had pneumatic and electric control systems. The lift was so quiet and smooth that the only audible sound was a whoosh of exhaust air leaving the back side of the tow shack.
In 1978 the Schmidts (with newborn Aaron in tow) returned to the States and toured the US, ultimately settling off-grid in the mountains outside of Leavenworth, WA. The mountains here are reminiscent of New Zealand’s southern alps and the Schmidts felt right at home. After the young family got the essentials out of the way (access, shelter, and electricity from the on-site creek), Aaron found time to replicate his father’s adventures in NZ and built his own lift in the backyard. This lift (later coined the MK II) is 900’ long with 450’ of vertical lift. It is a cable tow, in which the skier uses a grip and supporting strap to hang on for the double-diamond ride up. With only a teenager’s budget, the motive force was provided by a donated junk motorcycle. The motorcycle was pivoted and hung from a pole, and the rear wheel was replaced by a double half-wrap drive sheave and idler sheave. The motor never did run properly, so it was no great loss when in 1996 a wildfire swept over the lift and melted anything rubber or plastic.
Aaron returned home in 2006 after his own stint in the Navy as a fighter pilot. He, his wife Annie, and their three children Ava, Stella, and Erik, began their own adventures in skiing, but Aaron sadly noted the changes in the skiing experience. Their local hills now had lift lines, the tickets were prohibitively expensive, parking was a headache, and the sense of peace and relaxation had been replaced with the ever-present pressures of capitalism. Snowboards and fat skis had turned what were once lonely powder days into packed days. Aaron decided to rebuild the MK II and did so this time with a more appropriate budget. The new motor even came from an auxillary gen-set that had previously served on a blimp. A new wireless control system replaced the burned-out telemetry lines. And the fun came roaring right back!
Unfortunately, it soon became clear that the younger kids and intermediate level friends couldn’t share in the MK II’s skiing due to its experts-only terrain. If only that lift could be moved to another location for a few years…if only it could fit in a car and be taken to a friend’s place…and so the MK III was born.
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