A 360 Flight Around Aoraki Mt Cook

Take off over lakes and rivers

The effects of a small plane are felt straight away as we drive towards the beginning of the runway – it’s not exactly as smooth as a massive passenger aircraft. Then again, this thing is going to manoeuvre between mountain peaks in a way airliners only dream about!

The plane doesn’t need much of the runway to drift off into the air. Once up, we steadily loop up into the sky, gaining height and spectacular views from the get-go. The patterns of the braided rivers feeding into the magnificently blue Lake Pukaki can only really be appreciated from this aerial view. We get sneak peeks into the various valleys of the Southern Alps with its small rivers and glaciers before we make our way up the Tasman Valley containing the longest glacier of them all. At the bottom of the valley, the opaque turquoise waters of the Tasman Glacier Lake can be seen with floating ice bergs and tiny boats whizzing around it. Just behind is the terminal face of the Tasman Glacier.

The journey up the Tasman Glacier

We follow the 27km of the seemingly flat and smooth river of compacted ice, flowing in a way the naked eye cannot fathom. At the neve of the Tasman Glacier, we can see huge ice cliffs bunched up together and sticking out of the thick snow – this is where the glacier begins.

We can talk all day about what we can see on the ground of this sensational alpine environment forming the backbone of the South Island, but, man, we haven’t even begun on the mountains’ peaks! Already, Laura’s camera is about to implode as the shutter is going nuts at the panoramic views. Robin is having a hard time even concentrating on the filming he is meant to be doing. Some things are just better seen with your own eyes, and the Southern Alps is most definitely one of them.

A 360 image of a 360 flight around Aoraki Mt Cook… Mind blown!

Circling Aoraki Mt Cook

As we have travelled up the Tasman Glacier, the peak of Aoraki Mt Cook, New Zealand’s highest mountain at 3,724m, has been sat majestically on our left-hand side. Now, we are getting closer than we’ll ever get to Aoraki Mt Cook as we fly around it. On one of the ridges of the mountain, we spot a tiny hut – finally, something to give us some perspective of size in this untouched landscape. It appears to sit on the edge of the mountain – with, no doubt, the most beautiful back yard views on earth.

Crossing the divide

The Divide is the where the line of rugged mountain peaks of the Southern Alps splits the east coast of the South Island from the west coast. The notoriety of the West Coast’s wet weather couldn’t be more evident when we cross The Divide. We fly from the blue bird skies of the east into the cloudy skies of the west. Although we can’t see out to the Tasman Sea, the clouds reveal two things we really really wanted to see, the Franz and Fox Glacier!