These are the courses that put everything together, giving you the skills for off-track mountain exploration and giving you plenty of opportunity for practice. You won’t find any other courses like these.
These courses are designed to give you the skills to undertake transalpine trips confidently on your own.
What exactly are transalpine trips, and what skills do you need to undertake them? Trans means across or through, so transalpine can be defined as across an alpine area. If you are to go across an alpine area, then you need to be able to get to it and from it, through subalpine and forested areas. In New Zealand, these areas usually involve little to no guidance in the way of marked routes, and there are many unbridged rivers and streams to cross.
So, undertaking a transalpine trip requires skills that relate to crossing rivers, navigating across untracked terrain, and travelling on snow. Things like knowing what gear and food to bring, understanding the weather, deciding where and how to camp, and what to do when things go wrong, must also be factored in.
We offer two different Transalpine Courses:
Snow, Nav, and River Skills (5 Days)
This course covers snow skills, route planning, navigation, campsite selection, meal planning, trip strategy, river crossing, equipment choices, and much more. We combine everything into as much of a sustained journey as the weather will allow.
Participants need a moderately high level of fitness, and prior experience undertaking multi-day tramping trips, but do not need prior experience using alpine equipment.
Advanced Transalpine Skills (6 Days)
Do you have ambitions of such remote tramping and hunting trips that you’ll need to cross glaciated terrain or deal with some short tricky steps? This course will give you the strategic and rope skills to do so, and also includes the navigation, and route selection, and river crossing topics found on the Snow, Nav, and Rivers course. Participants must already be familiar with how to travel in alpine terrain using ice axe and crampons, and must have a high level of fitness.
Anyone getting into mountaineering will benefit from all of these skills, but please be aware this course very much has a “transalpine” rather than “summit” focus. As such we won’t cover multi-pitch belayed climbing and abseil techniques covered on many other mountaineering courses.
JUST ANNOUNCED
4-DAY COMBINED NAVIGATION AND ALPINE SKILLS COURSE
Queenstown, 19-22 November 2026
Not sure which course is right for you? Get in touch with our Chief Guide, Rob (WhatsApp +64 21 022 11126) to discuss options – he’d love to chat!
“This course really exceeded my expectations! I loved it. This trip has given me the confidence to explore more wild places and get out more. It was a very safe teaching environment and both Rob and Jane are excellent teachers with a wealth of knowledge. They were very attentive and hard working throughout the whole trip. I can’t imagine any better!”
“It was fantastic to spend the time with people that are so passionate about the outdoors. Rob and Jane were easy to get along with and explained things clearly and concisely. I think it was great to have both a male and female guide on the trip. The comms in the week leading up to the trip were excellent, it was great to have trip members’ input into decisions.”
“Both Rob and Tarsh were great – they complemented each other very well and both had much to offer. I learnt a lot! The course was a great balance of learning and fun banter. The plan for our trip was adapted as the course progressed, working with our strengths and growth points to get the best possible learning and enjoyment.”
