Winter Sports at Mt. Cook
New Zealand National Film Unit presents ‘Winter Sports at Mt Cook’ a 1946 film uploaded by archivesnz. The video focuses on skiing and other snow sports around the Hermitage…
Tag Archives: Southern Alps
New Zealand’s Valley of the Trolls
“On a hike across New Zealand’s Southern Alps, we find the kind of beauty fit for myths and legends”, writes Laura Dannen Redman in an article on Condé Nast Traveler. “We had sweat and…
Iconic Mountain Bike Race The Pioneer Set for Alps
A new mountain bike race, The Pioneer, is set to hit the rugged trails of the Southern Alps from 31 January through 6 February 2016. The race will string together established bike trails with…
New Zealand Glaciers Ebb and Tour Guides Play Catch-Up
Climate change is having uneven economic effects on tourism operators like Fox Glacier Guiding and Franz Josef Glacier Guides whose businesses depend on ice and snow, the New York Times reports. Guided glacier hiking began…
New Zealand Best Place to Travel on Your Own
New Zealand is the world’s safest, friendliest, and best place to travel on your own, according to Travel + Leisure magazine. The publication “crunched the numbers from the Global Peace Index, which ranks 162 nations…
Jonathan Conway Takes Snow Study High into Canadian Rockies
New Zealand scientist Jonathan Conway, who holds a PhD in glaciology and climatology from the University of Otago, is in the Canadian Rockies on a two-year posting at the University of Saskatchewan’s Centre for…
Must-See for Those after Palpable Taste of Unique Adventure
What sets docudrama Beyond The Edge apart from hundreds of other accounts of Edmund Hillary and Norgay Tenzing’s Mount Everest ascent is the intimate footage of the small group that set off from base…
New Zealand’s Dusty Landscapes Explain Ice Age Cooling
3 April 2014 – New Zealand’s iron-rich dust is helping scientists explain how the Earth cooled after the last Ice Age. Scientists travelled to the Southern Alps in an expedition to gather dust samples…
KiwiRail Scenic Journeys – Take A Break. Take A Train.
Watch the TranzAlpine train as it crosses the South Island, beginning on the East coast in Christchurch and ending on the West Coast in Greymouth, traversing the spectacular Southern…
Kiwi Leads the Trail in Iconic Alaskan Sled-dog Race
A New Zealander was the first musher en route to the town of Nome when the infamous Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race began Sunday. Otago based Curt Perano and 68 other mushers began the…
Wanaka Aerobatics in a Vintage Tiger Moth
Classic Flights takes San Gabriel Valley Tribune reporter Richard Irwin up in a vintage de Havilland Tiger Moth biplane for some shallow dives over Lake Wanaka. “The friendly pilots offer 20-minute scenic flights over beautiful…
Winter Games NZ 2013 trailer
Watch the trailer for the snow sports competition of the year, the Winter Games NZ 2013. Set against the spectacular backdrop of New Zealand’s Southern Alps, the Games…
It’s the Joy that Always Wins Out
New Zealand mountaineer George Lowe, the last survivor of the 1953 British expedition that conquered Everest, has died in Ripley, England aged 89. Hastings-born Lowe played a crucial part in the party’s success, displaying…
Southern wild
Mount Cook and the Mackenzie Country feature in the March/April issue of the Australian Geographic. “Mt Cook lies within the Southern Alps, a series of mountain ranges stretching along the entire South Island. The…
Staying Atop an Alpine Meadow
“Whare Kea Lodge pilot James Ford is gunning his helicopter up a wide, verdant valley on a perfect summer’s day,” Toronto Star travel editor Jim Byers describes. “He climbs up and up and clears a…
Luxurious Isolation
By helicopter to the Southern Alps, The Sydney Morning Herald’s Tricia Welsh discovers Minaret Station, a soft landing in a luxury tent on a sheep and cattle station. “We’re having the ultimate New Zealand…
Fabled Serenity Endures
Despite the tragedy of February’s catastrophic earthquake, New Zealand still delivers sublime travel experiences, writes Chris Leadbeater for The Independent. “Since 1884 has played a role as a lone token of man’s…
Intimate Sophistication
Wanaka’s Whare Kea is included in a Forbes’ list of the ‘World’s Top Microboutique Hotels’. “Whare Kea means ‘house of the kea’ in Maori — the kea being the world’s only alpine parrot. This…
Mountains rising
New Zealand’s 45 kilometer-long Southern Alps have been the subject of a ten year American study which has been collating data by GPS in order to determine how fast the mountain range is rising….
Fear the Cone
“The big daddy of New Zealand’s South Island fields has a reputation for being big, bad and nasty — in a good way,” Rachael Oakes-Ash writes for The Sydney Morning Herald. “Some whisper about…
Own your own town
Remote Southern Alps township Otira, population 44 is for sale. Selling for $1 million, the deal includes a hotel, fire station, town hall and 18 houses. The Otira Hotel, which started life as a…
Luxury on Tap
New Zealanders – the Telegraph’s Lisa Grainger and her partner came to learn on a recent trip – “are masters of the understatement”. “They’re dry. Quietly confident. Down to earth, capable and can-do. And,…
High on the Piste
Jane Peak is on a remote station in the Southern Alps accessible only by helicopter and “just begging for a beating” in the ski season when the slopes are “covered in fresh, untracked powder”,…
Godley’s Own Country
Godley Lake, NZ, features amongst the Observer‘s crème de la crème of international ski touring routes. “Described as a ‘Symphony on Skis’, this tour involves a traverse of the Southern Alps from east to west via some…
Alternative Slopes
Scotsman feature urges snow bunnies further afield than the Alps and Rockies, recommending NZ alongside Iran, Alaska and Chile as a desirable alternative. “The Alps that run spine-like through the South Island are dotted with ski resorts. Mt…
Southern Exposure
Guardian writer takes one of NZ’s iconic road trips: the State Highway 73 from Christchurch to Greymouth, across the Southern Alps. “The road begins to climb sharply, and in just a few miles, via a series of…
Life on the (Geological) Edge
Times of India lists NZ as its readers’ third most popular summer holiday destination. “The ice age carved the exquisite fretwork of Fiordland and the Marlborough Sounds, huge tectonic forces pushed up the Southern Alps and volcanism…
Change of Pace
BBC series on ex-pat Brits profiles Jake Barnett, a London banker turned Christchurch viticulture student. Barnett has nothing but praise for the NZ wine industry, not to mention his adopted homeland. “The nearest we get to…
Pleasure Island
Scotsman travel writer leaves the Southern Alps to Frodo and heads for the sunny shores of Waiheke Island, where bach culture and Gucci collide. “All kinds of homely structures are clinging to the hillside All have…
Canterbrian Miss October
NZ takes out the October slot of Lonely Planet‘s year planner for 2003. “Take one of the world’s great train journeys, the Tranzalpine, across the southern alps the varied scenery takes in the Canterbury Plains,…
“Land of the Long White Run”
NZ slopes get the thumbs up from Oz ski-buffs. The Southern Alps: “bigger than the Swiss, French and Austrian Alps combined” – are praised for their variety, beauty, and value for the dollar in a comprehensive SMH report.
Paradise Found
The Southern Alps. The Tongariro volcanoes. The Fiordland rain forest. “There is something archetypal about the scenery here, as though someone copied the planet’s most distinctive landscapes and jammed them all on two islands….New Zealand is the…
O’Donnell’s limit
“As star of the (Kiwi-directed) mountain-climbing epic Vertical Limit Chris O’Donnell had been helicoptered to the edge of a jagged rock formation in New Zealand’s rugged Southern Alps and deposited to “hang out” for…
I Think It Can
As the Southern Alps loom into view, Douglas Rogers seriously doubts whether his train can complete New Zealand’s greatest railway journey.
