NEW ZEALAND

NOVEMBER 2023

EPIC SCENERY

New Zealand is filled with beautiful slot canyons with rushing blue waters and ferns hanging from cliffs. Wilsons Creek in the Haast Pass area—rated as one of the top 10 classic canyons in New Zealand—is a deep schist slot gorge, more than 800 metres in length. In places it’s no more than three or four metres wide, with fluted bedrock towering 80 metres overhead and numerous turquoise pools.

Aoraki / Mount Cook is the highest mountain in New Zealand. Its height, as of 2014, is listed as 3,724 metres (12,218 feet). It sits in the Southern Alps, the mountain range that runs the length of the South Island. Lake Pūkaki is mainly fed by the braided Tasman River, which flows out of the Tasman Glacier. The Tasman Glacier is the largest glacier in New Zealand, and one of several large glaciers which flow south and east towards the Mackenzie Basin from the Southern Alps. The turquoise colour is caused by finely ground rock flour suspended in the water.

Fiordland is one of the most dramatic and beautiful parts of New Zealand. Carved by glaciers over 100,000 years the landscape is one where waterfalls cascade hundreds of metres into deep black fiords; where ancient rainforest clings to mountains and where shimmering lakes and granite peaks look as they did a thousand years ago. Fiordland National Park is a World Heritage Site and includes Milford, Dusky and Doubtful Sounds.