Why we chose to partner with Protect Our Winters

Smart Elevation exists because the backcountry matters. Every piece of equipment we sell - the snow study kits, avalanche safety books, and crystal cards - only makes sense if people are still going into the mountains. And that requires snow.

That's the most straightforward version of why we donate 1% of our revenue to Protect Our Winters NZ. But it's not the whole story.

I ski guide in the Craigieburns. I've been watching the snowline rise for years - not only on a graph, but in practice, on the ground, season after season. The club-fields that sit in that range are small, volunteer-run, and completely dependent on a reliable winter. They don't have the altitude buffer that the big commercial fields have. When the season starts late or finishes early, there's no redundancy - it just hurts. The people who run those fields, and the communities built around them, are absorbing the cost of something they didn't cause.

That's what made partnering with POW NZ feel like a straightforward decision rather than a marketing one.

Who is Protect Our Winters NZ?

POW was founded in 2007 by professional snowboarder Jeremy Jones, who was watching the mountains he'd spent his life in change faster than anyone wanted to admit. With no organisation speaking directly to the winter sports community about climate, he built one. It's since grown into a global movement with over 130,000 supporters. The New Zealand chapter launched in 2018.

POW NZ's focus is turning people who already love the outdoors into effective climate advocates. They do that through education, community engagement, and working directly with policymakers and businesses. They're not asking people to care about climate change in the abstract - they start with the thing people already love and build from there.

Why it matters here

New Zealand's mountains have already lost roughly a third of their snow and ice since 1977. Winters are getting shorter. Snowlines are creeping higher. For anyone who works or plays in the alpine environment, that's not a distant policy problem - it's already here, and it's measurable in real seasons at real fields.

The tools we sell are built around a simple premise: better information leads to better decisions in avalanche terrain. You assess the snowpack, understand what you're looking at, and make a call based on evidence. POW operates on the same logic - they take climate science and make it legible and actionable for the people actually spending time in the hills.

How we give

We donate through the 1% for the Planet framework, which POW NZ is a member of. It means the commitment is formalised and independently verified - 1% of revenue before tax, every year, regardless of how the season goes. We'd rather it be consistent and real than large and conditional.

If you spend time in the backcountry, POW NZ is worth knowing about. Find them at protectourwinters.nz.