Minaret Station is New Zealand Luxury Taken to the Next Level
There are two things you need to know about Minaret Station, one of the most luxurious lodges in New Zealand. The first is that it’s in Wanaka, in a spot so remote it’s only accessible by helicopter. The second is that it’s so remote, everything else drops away. Which is exactly why you’re here.
Nestled in a glacial valley next to the World Heritage-listed Mount Aspiring National Park and surrounded by sheer mountains populated with deer, this sustainable retreat has four chalets, hosting a maximum of 12 guests, and one main lodge. It’s a cinch to get here from Australia – a direct flight to Queenstown then a 25-minute chopper ride to the 20,000-hectare farm.
On approach, you’ll be asked if you’d like to be dropped halfway up the mountain so you can trek your way in. Minaret Station offers all the luxuries – fine dining, excellent drinking, a rainwater-filled hot tub on the deck of your chalet – but it revels in the raw beauty of its surroundings. So accept the invitation, breathe in the pristine air and hike through verdant woodland and past streams.
And then, just as the mist rolls over the mountaintops and the raindrops thicken, you’ll turn the corner to find a wooden cottage with a pot-belly stove and a table groaning with food (local cheddar, farm-grown lamb, a wonderfully earthy beetroot salad) and wine (such as Valli pinot noir from Central Otago). And this is just the beginning. Everything about Minaret Station is first class but it’s the heli-experiences that lift this lodge into bucket-list territory. Skiers will want to book a one-day trip to take on untracked powder runs on the slopes above the station. Anglers will head to the Southern Alps to find alpine streams brimming with wild rainbow trout. Or you might want to fly over the Fiordland and simply gaze at nature’s bounty. Cobalt-blue lakes hiding on mountaintops. Ribbons of river that glow silver. Black cliffs with collars of ice. Waterfalls too tall to catch on camera.
And if you’re really lucky, lunch is a lobster plucked from the water, cooked on a barbecue and served in the middle of it all. Everything else drops away.
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The real Minaret Station experience
New Zealand’s best heli-skiing is a short chopper ride from one of the most secluded lodges in the world.
To truly appreciate the total silence of this mountain, you have to experience the fury of noise you get standing next to a fully powered helicopter. As my fellow heli-skier, Chris Reiner, says – by shouting in my ear – “It’s like three cyclones hitting together.”
A chopper is the only way to get to the peak of this 2150-metre-high mountain range in Mount Aspiring National Park. Our pilot circles in search of a level landing place then our guide, Minaret Station general manager of operations Doug Beech, opens my door. I drop into half a metre of fresh snow as the helicopter ascends, creating a blast of wind that rips at my goggles. “Keep your head down,” yells Beech. But it’s next to impossible to look away from the majesty of New Zealand’s tallest peak, Mount Cook, blurred by swirling snow, beyond the chopper.
And then comes the silence, followed by the next-level scenery. Below, to the east, Lake Wānaka, stretched out along a U-shaped valley, a shock of electric-blue against snow-white and green. If I swivel my head and squint, I can almost make out the ocean on the West Coast. Beech has seen it all before. “Fresh snow last night,” he announces. “So there’s some [snow] slippage. Keep between my lines.” With his skis already strapped on, he glides through the powder as if he’s weightless. When I follow, it feels as if I’m floating on a hovercraft. I feel myself turning but it’s as if gravity has let me go. I can’t process how good this feels right now; I think I’m screaming but there’s too much snow in my face to know.
Although we have 17 mountain ranges and 800 possible runs to choose from today, I haven’t ventured far. Below me – in a high alpine meadow with no road in or out – is Minaret Station Alpine Lodge, four private chalets set around a lodge. Built at the end of a deep glacial valley bordered by the peaks of World-Heritage-listed Mount Aspiring National Park, it’s one of the most secluded luxury lodges on earth.
Helicopters are de rigueur here. It’s a 25-minute flight from Wānaka Airport along the edge of the lake, where open plains give way to rugged high country. Deer, cattle and sheep graze the most improbable farmland in the Antipodes.
After 14 runs (the average New Zealand heli-skiing operation offers six but the record here is 28), it’s a two-minute flight to the lodge. We land near my Alpine-chic chalet. Should I need to defrost, there’s a sunken hot tub on the private deck, with views up to the slopes I’ve just ridden. “At night you can hear the river running,” says Beech, “and the wildlife.”
I walk along a timber boardwalk to the main lodge for lunch, watching red stags feed beside the river that runs through the property. “We’ve had about 40 of them around here this season,” says guest services manager Ellie Nesbit.
We’re in the deer’s world here. There’s no-one but us for 50 kilometres in any direction so guests can luxuriate off-grid. Electricity and drinking water both come from a waterfall around the corner. Everything else? Transferred in by chopper. “Septic systems, 100 tonnes of concrete… even the hot tubs,” says Beech.
Lunch for every other heli-skier in New Zealand comes out of a guide’s backpack, served on the snow. But the property’s Mountain Kitchen features chandeliers, two living areas warmed by a wood fire and floor-to-ceiling windows. One of the best farm-to-kitchen restaurants in the country, the beef, lamb and venison are from the property and lunch comes with wines from a world-renowned cellar. Today, it’s Te Mana lamb from the family farm and one of Southern Otago’s legendary pinot noirs. “Lamb shoulder falling off the bone with the crackling of the fire in the background,” says executive chef Alastair Wilson as he delivers the main course. “Does it get better than that?”
Minaret Lodge is just as picturesque outside winter and offers the chance to take chopper excursions to inaccessible beaches on the West Coast (where guides forage for crayfish and abalone), over fjords, glaciers and waterfalls into Dusky Sound in the south or fly-fishing trips deep in the backcountry. “We can get you to parts of New Zealand that are inaccessible unless you’re a crazy mountain climber with a month on your calendar,” says Beech. “There are no roads where we go.”
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