In July 1924, the newly formed Ski Club of Victoria, with the help of local timber workers, built a ski run at the top of Donna Buang and a mountain hut, as did the Melbourne University Ski Club. Niall Brennan, author of Tales from the Australian Mountains, has fond memories of the early days of skiing at Donna Buang. ``We would arrive at the Ten Mile Turntable car park about midnight on Friday and hike to the hut in the moonlight and skied all weekend on the short, steep slope at the summit now used for tobogganing."

Earle Parkinson, another local writer and founder member of the Warburton Ski Club, says skiing at Donna Buang was eventually ruined by over-popularity. In the 1930s, thousands of sightseers would arrive on the mountain in buses, crowding the slopes and clogging the carpark.

By the late 1930s, serious skiers abandoned Donna Buang in favor of Mount Buller but the mountain remained a favorite winter day trip from Melbourne. For thousands, it was their first sight of snow.

The Black Friday 1939 bushfires destroyed most of the Ski Club Huts - the buildings which remained were shifted to Mt Baw Baw and Mt Buller. By the mid-1940s, there was no further large-scale organized skiing at Donna Buang, and the two ski runs became toboggan runs.