A husband-and-wife workshop in Jindabyne has pressed more than 100 pairs of handmade skis since 2019, using a core of Australian-grown alpine ash, native jarrah, and light paulownia, with every stage of assembly and finish carried out in the Snowy Mountains workshop. That is according to the latest episode of ABC Landline, which profiled Jonathan “JP” and Steph Paige and their business Desert Skis, a five-year development project that opened to the public in the 2025 snow season after years of prototype work and trial-and-error pressing runs.
The couple has built the business on an all-Australian timber core, pairing dense alpine ash as the structural hardwood with a thin impact layer of native jarrah and a lightweight paulownia filler. Paige, a mechanical engineer, and Ms Paige, an industrial electrician, built their own ski press and have refined the laminating process across five seasons of iteration from an initial pressing run that Paige described as “catastrophic” to ABC Landline.
Alpine ash, a south-eastern Australian eucalypt harvested by NSW Forestry Corporation in the Riverina region, is processed for Desert Skis at South Coast Timber’s mill in Eden on the NSW far south coast. The species was declared endangered by the federal government in March, with the listing applied to alpine ash forests across the ACT, NSW and Victoria under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.
The density of the alpine ash is what gives each ski the weight it needs to hold its line through uneven snow, a quality Ms Paige said was essential to the on-snow feel of a handmade pair. “It does give a little weight to the ski,” Ms Paige told ABC Landline, adding that the timber stops the ski from chattering through less-than-perfect conditions.
Sourcing the specific boards needed for a ski core is a departure from the flooring and decking runs that dominate South Coast Timber’s order book, where general manager Damien Bunting said the work demands precision rarely seen in commercial orders. “It is quite specific. They can’t have any knots or any imperfections at all,” Bunting told ABC Landline, noting that the alpine ash is air-dried after milling, then passed through a 40-degree Celsius pre-dryer and a kiln in a drying cycle that can run for around six months.
The couple has paired the alpine ash with a thin section of native jarrah, a Western Australian hardwood that has become harder to source since the state government’s 2024 ban on native forest logging took effect. Ms Paige described jarrah as the core’s impact layer, with the tightly packed grain and natural resistance to water and rot making the species the couple’s preferred choice for that role.
Desert Skis has sourced its jarrah from a closing mill in Albany, from a storm-felled tree on a family member’s property, and now from a WA mill supplying jarrah recovered from trees already felled or earmarked for removal ahead of construction projects. Paige told ABC Landline that the use of small dimensions extends the working life of each board and, in turn, the on-snow life of each pair, reducing the cycle of annual replacement common across the wider snow sports market.
The wooden core is glued and dried before it is laminated between a plastic base and a wood veneer top sheet, the assembly held together by a steel edge and pressed in the workshop’s custom-built ski press. Paige said each step in the build takes the time it needs, with the finished pair spending further weeks in shaping, grinding, polishing and oiling before bindings are mounted.
Freight costs and a counter-seasonal supplier calendar compound the challenge of running a ski workshop in a country better known for surfing, with the Paiges’ northern hemisphere suppliers running on an opposite production cycle. “Whilst we’re deep in winter, it’s summertime in the northern hemisphere,” Paige told ABC Landline, citing the mismatch as a standing constraint on Desert Skis’ supply arrangements.
Rowan Kennedy, a Snowy Mountains backcountry skier among Desert Skis’ early customers, said the traceability of the core timber was a drawcard when weighing a handmade pair against an imported factory-made ski. “You see the production from start to finish,” Kennedy told ABC Landline, citing the visibility of the build and the employment a single pair supports as reasons for choosing locally made.
Desert Skis opened for public orders in the 2025 snow season, with Ms Paige telling ABC Landline the couple plans to keep production deliberately small to control quality and limit waste. More than 100 pairs have now been pressed out of the Jindabyne workshop since the project began in 2019, with every core built on alpine ash milled at Eden and native jarrah recovered from Western Australian trees already felled or earmarked for removal.
