July 1st 2014: Flight

It seems like a dream now. One minute I was in a café in Queenstown and then a few minutes later I was standing on Transit Beach on the West Coast of Fiordland watching 3-4 foot lefts reel across a sandbar. There was nobody out. There hardly ever is on this remote beach just south of Milford Sound. 

The morning had started badly: a text through, the ski shoot I had planned was cancelled – lack of snow. I sent a text to my mate Paul Mitchell to see if he had time to catch-up. Like all good helicopter pilots he'd taken his wife Kat to a party in Methven for the night (that's just what you do when your car is a Hughes 500 helicopter). But his Squirrel was about to leave ZQN bound for Milford Sound and there was a seat for me.

Flying in helicopters is one of the most amazing things you can do and if you put the Southern Alps between your point of origin and your destination then you have one of the world's most incredible flight paths. We followed the Shotover River up into the mountains, lofted across snow-capped peaks and razor-edge ridgelines before floating out across the emerald waters of Lake Wakatipu. Across the lake we were soon swallowed up by the Humboldt Mountains with snowfields, glaciers, waterfalls and high alpine lakes dazzling our senses ... at times just metres beneath our feet.

It doesn't matter how often I fly, the feeling is always the same: an awe-inspiring sensory overload. The seamless blue sky on this day made it a dream for photography. I was sharing the cockpit with a photographer called Vaughan Brookfield. He's originally from Hawkes Bay and has chased the winters shooting skiing and snowboarding, but has now settled in Queenstown where he's carving out a career as a commercial photographer. He's just 27, but pretty handy with his Canon 1DX.

Want to experience your own flight with Heli Tours? Or get dropped off into pumping surf on the West Coast for the day? Or find knee-deep powder runs? These guys thrive on this sort of thing and you can contact the team at Heli Tours right here.

See you out there ... Derek

PS The 2014 Dunedin Craft Beer and Food Festival is locked in for October 4, 2014. Put that in your diary right now! It's going to be huge ...