A couple of weeks have passed and I still haven’t come down from the high of our 2 days out with Harris Mountains HeliSki. I’ve been laughing at myself trying to keep the powder dreams alive by watching videos we made to relive the 2 amazing days. Finding the enthusiasm to go resort skiing has been difficult and concentrating on writing about anything else but heli skiing has been troublesome too!

The first day was out of Wanaka and the weather was absolutely sublime with perfect blue skies and not a breath of wind, so it was no great surprise that it was a record breaking day for the number of heli skiers out. The avalanche risk was considerable so we couldn’t tackle some of the really tasty looking lines, but the slopes were a nice pitch and just perfect for advanced riders. There were occasional patches of wind crust, but the snow was mostly lovely shallow powder and on a couple of runs it was like a magic carpet! My favourite run was The Fridge, which as the name would suggest, had amazing snow. We had a lead guide who was an old hand and adept at keeping discerning heli skiers very happy, and the ability match of the group was ideal.

The second day was from Queenstown out past Glenorchy from the Invincibles Snowfields heli pad, off Centaur Peaks zone (terrain shared with Alpine Heliski). The terrain there was striking with its rocky escarpments and it was burly, although once again the avi risk was considerable so we couldn’t ski anything too steep or crazy. The snow was pristine on a couple or runs albeit a little thin in places, and really good on other runs. One minor limitation was that we only skied a couple of zones so we repeated runs and at times our guide led us down choke points that had already been skied and we couldn’t spread out to get fully fresh tracks, but then I’m just a complete fuss pot and it’s my job to critique things to the nth degree! My overall impression of the day was that it was phenomenal and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

See our Harris Mountains Heliski review for our thoughts on the pros and cons and also see our heli ski ratings to see how we rate HMH versus the other NZ heli ski outfits. Harris Mountains Heliski is still rated by us as the best overall New Zealand heli skiing operator.
See our video here