Who Controls the Wood
A couple in the NSW Snowy Mountains are making handmade skis from Australian-grown timber, but the material chain behind the project runs through state forestry, timber mills and a shrinking supply of native hardwoods. Jonathan and Steph Paige, who operate out of a workshop in Jindabyne, use a wooden core made from alpine ash, jarrah and paulownia, with the alpine ash harvested by the NSW Forestry Corporation in the Riverina region, west of Canberra, and processed at a timber mill in Eden on the NSW far south coast.
The project sits inside a landscape already shaped by official decisions about land, logging and scarcity. As of March, the alpine ash forests of the Australian mainland have been declared as endangered by the federal government. Jarrah has also become more challenging to access since the state government banned native forest logging in 2024, pushing the couple to source timber from other jarrah trees that had already fallen or were being cut down for construction projects.
Learning by Trial, Not by the Industry
Jonathan Paige said, "You could probably get a job at a big company in Europe or the US and have somebody show you the ropes," and added, "Being here, it was very much just learn as you go, refine, reiterate." That is the reality of a small workshop trying to build something by hand in a country more familiar with sun and surfing than snow-covered mountains: no big industrial machine, no neat training pipeline, just trial, error and a lot of expensive patience.
He said, "The first couple of pairs we pressed were catastrophic. The first one was a total botched job," and described the process as one with many variables, including temperature, humidity of the timber, the day it is milled, the day it is glued up and the type of timber used. The work is not presented as a slick factory line but as a slow, exacting process where mistakes are costly and every stage depends on the condition of the material.
Steph Paige said the alpine ash gives weight to the ski and helps improve the feel of the ski, saying, "You need that weight to improve the feel [of the ski], so when you're skiing through something that may not be perfect power or perfect grooming, you want your ski not to be chattering away." Even the language of the product points back to the terrain and the material limits that shape it.
What the Supply Chain Demands
Damien Bunting, the general manager of South Coast Timber, said the request for the specific hardwood boards was unusual. He said, "This is a little bit more meticulous, and you've got to really search for the right quality boards," and, "It is quite specific. They can't have any knots or any imperfections at all." The boards have to be selected with care, because the ski-making process leaves no room for flaws that would be tolerated in a more disposable system.
He also said, "It can get a little bit monotonous sometimes in the mill, so when you get an opportunity to do something that's a little bit out of the box, you're like, 'Let's get into it'" and, "When you're dealing with a natural product, you can't rush it, or maybe you can, but you're risking destroying it," adding, "Take your time, you push it through nicely and the rewards are at the other end." The timber is cut when conditions are right and air dried, before spending weeks in a 40-degree Celsius pre-dryer and a kiln. The drying process can take about six months.
The wooden core is then glued and dried, laminated between a plastic base and a wood veneer top sheet, and held together by a steel edge. It then takes weeks to cut, grind, polish and oil the skis before they are tuned, waxed and have their bindings mounted. Jonathan Paige said, "Every step takes time and it all adds up, but everything takes the amount of time it needs. Nothing is fast here," and noted that the plastic base and ski edge are imported products, while the rest of the materials in the skis are Australian made.
He said living in a country more familiar with sun and surfing than snow-covered mountains makes ski-making more challenging because of high freight costs and a small local industry, adding, "Whilst we're deep in winter, it's summertime in the northern hemisphere. Most of your suppliers … we're just not on that same schedule,".
A Small Workshop Against the Clock
Desert Skis opened to the public in winter 2025 after five years of trial and error and testing product samples. Steph Paige said, "It was motivating because after five years, you are kind of like, 'This is a long journey. This is a lot of money. Is this going to be worth it?'" and, "There are times when you're kind of looking at each other like, 'What are we doing?'"
Local backcountry skier Rowan Kennedy, a friend of the Paiges, said, "It brings joy, seeing the creation of the ski, knowing where the timber comes from, knowing it's locally sourced," and, "You see the production from start to finish and you know that you're giving a job to a local person." Steph Paige said, "It's really important to us that they are handmade, that we respect the timbers that we're using, that we can source locally," and, "If we scaled too quickly, too fast, we wouldn't be able to control the quality and there would be more waste."
Jonathan Paige said, "It might be four, five, six, seven, eight of us on our skis that we've made," and, "It's cool when you sit there and just take it in for a minute. You go, 'Man, this is rad'." He added, "Everything we're having fun on is from here. How cool is that?"