Meet the Trustees
Margaret Fyfe - Trust Patron
Margaret is Tūpiki Trust patron and an esteemed kaumatua in the New Zealand climbing community. Margaret was NZAC President 1977-79. She has a distinguished climbing record including the first winter traverse of Pinnacles Ridge on Mt Ruapehu and first ascent of SE face of Mt Castor. She was the first woman to climb all New Zealand 3000m peaks. Margaret became an NZAC Life Member during the club’s centenary in 1991.
Ross Cullen - Trust Chair
Ross was President of the NZAC from 1991-1993 after time as Otago Section chair 1984-85. During his 43 year engagement with the club he has held numerous roles including HQ committee chair 1997-2001, two stints as Publications convenor 2003-2007, 2016 -, two terms as Board member. During his period of engagement with the NZAC administration he has attended numerous Club Committee meetings and talked to many of the sections around the country. Ross was appointed a Life Member of NZAC in 2002 in recognition of his sustained contribution to the club.
Ross has climbed and scrambled on eight continents, focused particularly on the Ohau- Landsborough region and authored the first two editions of the guidebook to that region.
In his professional life he is an emeritus professor of resource economics at Lincoln University, and worked for 35 years in academia, teaching and researching on a wide range of environmental and resource issues. In his retirement Ross volunteers on numerous conservation and outdoor recreation projects in Te Tau Ihu region.
Dave Bamford - Trustee
Dave has a life centred around mountaineering, protected areas and sustainable tourism in developing countries and regions. He has climbed extensively in New Zealand. Ascents include all the 3,000 metre peaks in New Zealand including several first ascents. He has climbed overseas in the Himalayas, South America, Europe and Antarctica. He is a past president (2003-2005) and a life member of NZAC.
Dave worked in New Zealand’s National Park Service with a focus on visitor use. In 1986 with a business partner he founded Tourism Resource Consultants. The firm had a 30-year history promoting sustainable tourism in more than 40 countries. In his current capacity as an independent tourism advisor, Dave focuses on providing strategic advice and input on a range of tourism and conservation projects.
Dave attended and contributed to Sustainable Summits conferences 2014, 2016, 2018, 2020 and was the 2021 recipient of The Sir Jack Newman Award for Outstanding Industry Leadership in tourism. He is a board member for the Timber Trail Lodge, Kāpiti Nature Lodge and the board of Te Urewera, New Zealand’s first large protected area that is jointly managed by Tuhoe and Crown nominees.
Geoff Gabites - Trustee
Geoff has considerable business experience linked to outdoor recreation including manufacturing, retail, support services. Geoff is owner-director and Chief Executive Officer at Cycle Journeys based in Christchurch. Geoff made a major contribution to New Zealand climbing, focused particularly on the Darran Mountains, leading the development with partners of winter ice climbing in that region. He participated in a number of expeditions to Himalayan peaks including the first ascent of Molamenqing.
Geoff was NZAC President 1989-91 and in a variety of roles provided almost thirty-year period of leadership in the Club. Geoff, with insight and expertise honed by involvement in several outdoor recreation businesses, was a significant force in the growth and evolution of NZAC during the last thirty years. In 1999 he met key Banff Mountain Film Festival players and established the relationship that enables NZAC to screen Banff movies each year.
Geoff is a Life Member of NZAC. In 2015 he was awarded Skills Active Supreme Award and Sport New Zealand Volunteer Award for his outstanding contributions in the outdoors.
Sam Newton - Trustee
Sam holds a Bachelor of Commerce, a Bachelor of Arts with Honours, and has been a recipient of the Sir Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellowship. He has worked in a variety of high-profile roles including as a Parliamentary Advisor, and has held a number of Board appointments, including as Chair of the Canterbury Aoraki Conservation Board, Deputy Chair of the New Zealand Mountain Safety Council and as Trustee of ACAT.
Sam is passionate about active recreation in the outdoors and has a wide variety of interests including rock climbing, mountaineering, ski touring, packrafting, and tramping. He also serves as an Officer in the New Zealand Army Reserve.
Martin Hunter - Trustee
Martin (or Marty as he is often referred to) has climbed in New Zealand and has been a member of a number of expeditions to Himalayan peaks in Nepal, India, and Tibet, including a first ascent of Syao Kang in the Kangchenjunga region in Eastern Nepal. He has climbed in Alaska, Peru and Europe, making the most of a seven year stint living in the UK.
His professional background is in law, and he has held a variety of executive roles in financial services companies including banking, risk management, HR, funds management, strategy and operations.
He has a particular interest in the role that the outdoors and adventure play in the education and development of young people. He is a trustee of Hillary Outdoors, and has been a member of the NZAC for many years starting off in the Wellington section and now in the Auckland section.
Jim Petersen - Trustee
NZAC President Jim Petersen represents the New Zealand Alpine Club on the Board of the Tūpiki Trust. Jim’s passion for the outdoors began in the Tongariro area where, as a teen on school outdoor education trips, he first came face-to-face with the mountain tops and what lies beyond.
Jim rock-climbed his way through university and multi-sported his way through his twenties but when his own children were leaving their teen years behind, he felt the pull of the mountains once more and joined the Alpine Club to draw on the expertise and support of its volunteers.
Jim began volunteering for the Club when he moved to Christchurch, where he ran Banff Film festival screenings, began instructing and coordinating snowcraft courses and has chaired the Canterbury Westland Section Committee since 2017. As a member of the Section Council and its predecessor, the Club Committee, Jim has worked on the NZAC Board with the four most recent presidents, and that experience will ensure the Club’s close links with the Tūpiki Trust continue to develop to our mutual benefit.
Lindsay Smith - Trust Adminstrator
Lindsay has ended his term as a Tūpiki Trustee to take up the newly formed role of Trust Administrator, aiming to relieve the Trustees of many of their operational responsibilities. Lindsay has many years of leadership in creating and implementing strategic changes across a diverse range of significant businesses and community organisations in New Zealand and overseas, from a background in media and public relations.
He was an NZAC board member and was President of New Zealand Alpine Club 2019-2021, following twenty years’ service to Otago Section. Indeed, the family connection to the section continues with his son Riley being elected Otago Section Chair as a 17-year-old.
Although he rates himself at best a mediocre rock climber and mountaineer, that in no way diminishes his passion for climbing in all its forms. As the first elected President under the revised Board governance structure, Lindsay is proud of the contribution he was able to make to the New Zealand Alpine Club during the Covid-19 crisis during his term.