Helicopter Flight and Alpine Trek (Queenstown & Wanaka)

You will meet your guide at 8am in Wanaka for a briefing of the day’s events and an equipment check. Your guide will drive you to road end at the entrance to the Mt Aspiring National park and the beginning of your adventure. The journey up the Matukituki Valley is very scenic and you will be driving past Lake Wanaka and through farmland with deer, cattle and sheep in the pastures. The journey takes an hour to a point known as Raspberry Hut, named after a farmers hut nearby. Toilets are available at this point. The helicopter arrives from its base and after a safety brief you are all aboard and flying into the mountains. The helicopter gains height quickly, traversing dramatic ridges and river gorges to drop you off on a saddle overlooking the beautiful Matukituki Valley with picture postcard views of Mt Aspiring. You are now high in the sub alpine zones with a myriad of alpine flowers and grasses interspersed with colourful schist rocks. In the early season you will be walking on snow in places also. There is no track as you traverse the summer snowfields on to the glacier scoured rock yet the walking is never too hard or strenuous. The route we trek is along low angled mountain tops with constant views of the heavily glaciated peaks of the Mt Aspiring region and there is plenty of opportunity to stop for photos or merely to admire the views! The outlook from your majestic lunch spot is of hanging glaciers, waterfalls and a beech forest filled valley. The New Zealand mountain parrot, called the Kea, often come for a visit in the vain hope of tempting you into feeding them. These mischievous birds are extremely intelligent and spend much of their spare time investigating (and often in the process destroying) people’s packs and other items left lying around. After lunch we continue our trek through passes and over small peaks to our helicopter pick up point in the afternoon. We re-board the helicopter for the descent into the valley below.