Mount Cook glacier guiding: a morning on the Tasman ice

Mount Cook glacier guiding on the Tasman is a slow, careful walk across ice that few people ever reach on foot. The trip on this site sets a group of no more than 11 down on the glacier for as long as 2 hours, with a 15-minute helicopter ride at either end. No experience is needed: the guiding company supplies the specialist equipment and teaches you to use it.⁸

The guides are professionals. Mt Cook Glacier Guiding says its guides are fully qualified, or training, as Hard Ice Guides and Alpine Trekking Guides through the New Zealand Mountain Guides Association.⁹ Alpine Guides, which guides the rival heli hike sold by the Helicopter Line, has worked in the park since 1966, and the Mackenzie tourism body calls it the country's longest-established mountain guiding company.¹⁰

The guiding company itself says that flying in by helicopter or ski plane is the best way to experience the glacier.¹¹ That is because the ice worth walking on lies far up the valley, beyond the rubble and moraine you see from the road. This page walks you through the morning from the airport desk to the last step back into the helicopter.

The flight in climbs the Tasman Valley over country the Department of Conservation describes in plain terms: its avalanche scale ranks the floor of the Tasman Valley, as far as where white ice begins, as simple terrain.²³ Beyond that point the glacier begins, and most of the park around it is complex avalanche terrain.²⁴ The helicopter carries you past the transition in minutes.

Alpine Guides says its heli hikes land high on the white ice of the glacier, roughly 1,200 metres up.^25,26 Down at the terminal lake the picture is different: the lookout on the public track stands on a rocky wall of glacial debris, and the moraine walls around the lake are unstable and hazardous.^27,28 That is the part of the glacier most visitors see, and it looks grey, not white.

Stepping out of the helicopter onto clean ice is a surprise in itself. The surface glitters, the air is still and the walls of the valley rise on both sides. Your guide will move the group away from the landing area before the helicopter lifts off again, and from then on, the walk is at the pace of the slowest walker.

A glacier is a moving, cracking mass of ice. The Helicopter Line lists the terrain hazards plainly: falling rocks, cliffs, ice cliffs, crevasses, changing snow, steep slopes, loose rocks and icy surfaces.³⁴ It judges an avalanche reaching the lower Tasman Glacier to be unlikely, but still possible.³⁵ The Southern Alps also sit on the Alpine Fault, where earthquakes can strike without warning.³⁶

Help is far away. The operator warns that its glacier landings and guided hikes may be an hour or more from advanced medical care, and that only basic first aid is available on site.^37,38 That is why guides choose the route, rope off hazards and turn back when conditions change, and why a Tasman Glacier hike for visitors should always be a guided one.

Never try it alone. Even at the lake, DOC cautions that stepping onto the ice can cost you your life, and that icebergs are unstable and may roll over.^7,6 The public tracks end at viewpoints for a reason. To stand on the Tasman itself, book the guided heli hike, and let a professional read the ice for you.