Culverden Attractions
About Alpine Springs Helicopters, Hanmer Springs, New Zealand
- 30 years flying experience
- Invaluable local knowledge for hunters, fisherman and trampers
- 2 types of helicopters to choose from
- Heli biking and boarding options
- Licensed for anywhere in New Zealand
- Scenic flights of any duration
- Can work in with Hanmer Air's fixed wing aircraft
Contact Info:
282 Woodbank Rd. Hanmer Springs, 8273, New Zealand
Ph/Fax/Cell: +64 3 315 7165
027 223 4022
eMail: bhalo@xtra.co.nz
Web http://www.alpinespringsheli.co.nz
Welcome to Alpine Springs Helicopters and Bill Hales
Bill Hales...
Enjoy a scenic flight or charter to anywhere in New Zealand with Bill, an icon in NZ aviation and the high country. He can cater for all your scenic, hunting, tramping and fishing requirements. He can even pick you up from the Tininn Lodge and drop you off for a game of golf with Ross, or a horse trek with Lawrie and Jenny!
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Bill Hales Favourite Food: Meat and Spuds, Steak and NZ Venison Favourite Colour: Any Bushshirt Favourite Saying: “Nice and Easy” |
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Short Story: As the author and designer of this web site I was asked by Bill to write a story about flying from Hanmer Springs to Mt Cook return - a typical scenic flight. His empathy with the mountains adds a rich dimension.... The flight plan will not only have it's basis in aviation skills, but will be just as much influenced by his countless years spent on foot in these wild lands. Wind direction not only dictates flight routes, but also a hunter's instincts so you can be assured you may see wild game. |
"Nice and easy" is Bill's motto and is also the name of the game, for mountain sides also supply lift, and to fly across them in relation to the air flow of the day, over or against the slopes, means efficiency and smoothness! Passengers may not understand the nuances of direction in relation to safety as well, but I can guarantee you'll "be agog" at the sensations as New Zealand's unique terrain and vegetation is presented as you contour deeply incised mountain sides at altitude and speed, to a spectacular advantage. The course set will be far from 'not planned". He's either going to fly down to Mt Cook National Park on the west [wet] side of the Southern Alps, and return on the dryer [brown] side or vice versa. Lets take the former scenario:
Hugging the very sides of the foothills where they abut the Canterbury Plains, be ready to see little towns like Oxford appear in the bubble by your knees, but they'll be interspersed by amazing small lakes and rivers in a brown/green landscape. Just when you're used to this semi rural landscape to the left with hills to the right suddenly you'll find you're long way near nothing as Bill crosses huge grey expanses of braided river beds such as the Rakia, and may fly up them in search of the next pass to the next valley, because now the mountains are truly large. If you just want to fly over them then I'd suggest a commercial jet flight from Auckland to Queenstown. With Bill you'll be looking for the perfect line!
At some point he has to cross the Godley Glacier on the northern edge of Mt Cook National Park, and you may have enough height to see the huge glacier floured waters of Lake Tekapo that are filled by this catchment of white and blue with very milky glacial lakes, but this won't occupy your reality for long! You're about to have space redefined! By this point the mountains are so large and above the aircraft that it appears that you may crash into them. A sense of scale is lost to all but the experienced alpine aviator or mountaineer. Just when you think you may have the horizon "worked out" though, it's inevitable Bill will have to deviate from a straight flight path. If he banks away then suddenly the scenery gets taller! If he banks towards.... be prepared to enjoy the blueness of crevasses and ice-falls, or has his keen eyes spotted a Chamois or Thar [Himalayan Mountain Goat]?
In my imaginings of the perfect day out I'd love it if he landed at Glenntanner Park just down the road from Mt Cook village, still on the east of the alps, so I could get an ice cream, and maybe even shut down for a cuppa, because it can be hot for a pilot sitting in that perspex bubble for 30 years plus! Still I would not mind if we did the brew up out of the wind somewhere on a flat area half way up any mountain. These are the spots I love, not the airy summits.
On take-off, from perhaps Glenntanner, we'll gather forward speed with the nose down a bit [to examine the sheep?!], then skirt left for lift off the Ben Ohaus and if the local flight paths allow it speed over the Hermitage where I used to live, across the Muellar Glacier and up the Hooker Glacier side of Mt Cook. This valley floor gets steeper and steeper - I would not like to be in a fixed wing with a pilot who did not understand this terrain! The crevasses are now so large that it takes a mountain hut such as Empress to give them scale, and when flying up this valley I'm reminded too that there is a lot of Mt Cook now above us, but we have to climb out [looking for hot lift again] and pop over the "divide" to the Cook River and Balfour Glacier and skirt right towards the Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers around the flanks of NZ's second great summit, Mt Tasman. More ice than rock now.
The views out the front now not only encompasses huge neve snowfields [as per above photos - the two on the right], but the sea! And it's not hard on a good day to see the breakers on the beach. Through the headset I'd be chatting about the features to Bill and maybe swapping tales of daring-do long ago!
But the sun relaxes me as it shines in the bubble like cockpit and I give in to simply enjoying, no longer quite so driven to take photos even. That is bush down there on the left - the nature of the terrain is no longer as raw or as barren as the east coast glaciers. As we fly north on our return slowly the huge snow fields give way to smaller more intricate valleys and mountains. We consider where we'll nip back over to the east - maybe up a roadless remote valley, or something like the roaded Arthur or Lewis passes.
This flight as I write it based on a life time of experiences in this environment brings me to how to end it: I'd vote for a soak in the Hanmer hot pools and a beer, but I'm not sure in what order! It's the flight of a life time, a flight of fancy until it's done, and you can't just take it in passively - you live it and participate in it with Bill, and that is the wonder - it builds up a thirst!
Donald Lousley Oct 2006