The heli-skiing season 2019 is slowly coming to an end and it’s a great time for a retrospective. It has definitely been a winter of two halves: While July was a difficult month for us with not much snow and warm temperatures, August was the complete opposite with a stable snowpack, lots of fresh powder and many bluebird days. And our good luck continued in spring - September 2019 will be one to remember. With long, sunny days and still lots of fresh winter powder in our terrain we were able to make a lot of guests very happy. 

“It was an awesome season but it was definitely a lot of hard work”, concludes HMH Manager Hugh Barnard. “We managed to get out very often, even in July, but it wasn’t always easy to find good conditions and we all lost some sleep over it.” But everything was worth the trouble and Harris Mountains Heli-ski could offer some incredible heli-skiing and heliboarding experiences to our clients. On August 18th we even managed to have the busiest day in the entire history of the company. 119 guests and 31 guides used 11 helicopters to ski mountain ranges in Queenstown, Wanaka and Mount Cook. “That day made me very proud, not just because of the numbers. Of course, we are happy about the record day but for me, it is more important that our clients didn’t even realise how busy that day was”, says Hugh. With a terrain that covers more than 3000 square kilometres and has more than 400 runs, everyone could still feel as if they were the only ones around. 

Once again we saw a lot of our loyal long-term clients but also new faces. Especially clients from China who are interested more and more in the joy of heli-skiing. With packages for all abilities, everyone got what they were after, whether it was a day of shredding and going down the steepest runs or taking it slow and making the most of all the beautiful photo opportunities in the Southern Alps. 

As always at the end of the season, our guides are off to more winter adventures all around the globe. But next year they will be back for another season in the breathtaking world of New Zealand’s Southern Alps.