Mount Aspiring National Park

Mount Aspiring National Park covers about 3,500 square kilometres along the Southern Alps between Haast and Fiordland, and its centre is Tititea, Mount Aspiring, at 3,033 metres - a sharp glaciated horn that climbers call the Matterhorn of the South and that is a serious mountaineering objective rather than a walk-up. Around it are the Bonar and Volta glaciers, the Olivine Wilderness Area where no tracks or huts are maintained at all, and a set of beech-forest valleys - Matukituki, Wilkin, Young, Routeburn, Rees and Dart - that carry the walking. The park is part of the Te Wahipounamu World Heritage Area. Access is by valley road, and several of those roads are unsealed with unbridged fords that flood; the Matukituki road to Raspberry Creek is the best known example. Kea are common at road ends and destructive. This is genuine mountain country and river crossings account for much of its accident record.

History

Mount Aspiring National Park was established in 1964 as New Zealand's tenth national park, and in April 2005 the Nature Heritage Fund bought private land in the Landsborough River valley to add to it. A company's proposal of 2006 to drive a bus tunnel through the park from the Routeburn Road to the Hollyford Valley, cutting the journey from Queenstown to Milford Sound, was declined by the Conservation Authority in 2007 and, after approval in principle in 2011, rejected by the Minister of Conservation in July 2013 as beyond what was appropriate for a World Heritage Area; in 2009 the government had also suggested opening about a fifth of the park to mining. The park is part of the Te Wahipounamu World Heritage Site (Wikipedia, Mount Aspiring National Park).

Highlights

• Tititea, Mount Aspiring - the 3,033-metre glaciated horn.
• The beech valleys - Matukituki, Wilkin, Rees and Dart.
• The Olivine Wilderness - a zone with no tracks or huts by design.
• The fords - the unbridged crossings on the valley access roads.

When to go

November to April. Book huts. Check river levels and the forecast - fords and crossings become impassable after rain, which is the park's main hazard.

Before you go

Access roads have unbridged fords and some rental agreements exclude them. River crossings are the leading cause of trouble here. Kea damage cars and gear. Longer routes need real tramping experience.

Nearby

Wanaka and Makarora are on the eastern side; Glenorchy and the Routeburn are south.

Key facts