By joining one of our trips, you’re signing up for a truly genuine experience of somewhere away from the beaten paths.
Most of our journeys are three to six days long, but you can choose anything from two days to eight days. The longer the trip, the better the opportunity to visit somewhere really remote. As a group we’ll carry everything we need for the duration of the trip, so that we can be flexible and self-sufficient.
What’s included in a guided journey?
- We organise and prepare all of the meals (including lunches, snacks, and hot drinks) and cater to any dietary requirements. We pride ourselves in providing really good quality, nutritious, tasty food.
- We supply high quality tents and cooking equipment on all journeys, and when required also supply alpine equipment like ice axes, crampons, helmets, harnesses, etc.
- You’ll be guided by a highly experienced and qualified guide (or two). Your guide will not only provide you with a safe and enjoyable trip, but will actively seek your input where possible regarding trip options; you will all form part of a team in which the guide is the most experienced member. Most of our guides are qualified through the NZ Mountain Guides Association; the remainder are Level 2 instructors with the NZ Outdoor Instructors Association. All guides have current first aid training to at least Pre-Hospital Emergency Care (PHEC) level.
- We all carry a share of group food, tents, and other equipment – you should allow at least a third of the space in your pack for this.
- You’ll be provided with detailed information before the trip about what to bring. When we first meet, your guide will go through your personal clothing and equipment to help fine-tune what actually comes on the trip, to find the right balance of having everything you need and nothing more. We have plenty of spare clothing and equipment available if you need to borrow something.
- Meeting locations and methods of transport vary depending on each trip, but in many cases we can provide complementary transport to the trip start. This will be confirmed by our lead guide when you sign up.
I went along on a couple of ”hard” Mountain Journeys trips and they were amazing. Some organised backpacking trips can sometimes feel like you’re being herded from one spot to another—Mountain Journeys is nothing like that.
The tramps go completely off the beaten track. The guides involved us in the decision making process, and would talk through different options with everyone. I learnt a ton from hearing the decision-making musings of Rob and the other guides. They’re enthusiastic, encouraging, really know their stuff, and they were all really supportive of people asking questions.
On the food: I’m vegetarian and the food was really good! Truly, I can’t recommend Mountain Journeys more!
From the start Rob was amazing on giving us advice on what to bring and answer any questions. Rob made sure to walk us through the plan and the weather conditions and addressed any concerns we might have a couple of days before the trip.
The trip itself was an amazing experience that exceeded my expectations and I gained such a wealth of information. The knowledge and experience that Rob has is astounding and you can see he’s very eager to share this with his clients.
The food gets a special mention because I haven’t had such luxurious, tasty, filling, and somehow lightweight meals in the mountains before.
I would highly recommend Mountain Journeys to anyone who wants an adventure off the beaten track with a guide that is knowledgeable, experienced, and committed to giving his clients the best experiences.
Upcoming Journeys
7-Day ‘Hard’ Journey
1-9 December 2025
Maximum group size: 6 people with 2 guides
Cost: $4,310 per person
Meeting location: TBC
Two more former guests – Sian and Jeff from Palmerston North – have signed up for their third trip with Mountain Journeys, and are looking for more people to join them. In early Summer there’s still a lot of snow around but conditions are getting warmer and the daylight longer. We have so many potential trip options for this one – sign up now if you’re keen to be part of the conversation!
If you’re reasonably fit and you’ve always been interested in tramping somewhere more adventurous, but don’t know where to start or don’t have anyone to go with, this is your opportunity! This trip will be reasonably challenging but should be no problem if you have a solid tramping background.
4-Day ‘Moderate’ Journey
16-19 January 2026
Maximum group size: 6 people with 2 guides
Guides: Rob Frost & Tarsh Turner
Cost: $2,540 per person
Meeting location: Christchurch
Our aim for this trip is to provide an experience that prioritises the enjoyment of remote places, ideally without too much struggle to get there! We’ll aim to travel and camp in a mixture of tussock tops, forests, and valleys, taking everything we need to be self-sufficient and flexible.
If the forecast allows it, we’ll aim for a tramp on the West Coast near Hokitika or Greymouth – the river gorges and rugged ranges over there are incredibly beautiful. If it looks ‘wet in the west’ we can instead target the untracked eastern ranges of Arthurs Pass or Lewis Pass.
Join us on a gently challenging trip for three nights, to somewhere unique with great company, great food, and friendly, experienced guides.
3 to 6 Day Private Journey
windows available late Feb – early March 2026
Here is your opportunity for a customised journey for you and whoever you’d like to bring with you. We can follow the best weather and make the trip as relaxed or as challenging as you like.
You can choose from:
(1) a traditional off-track tramping trip,
(2) an ascent of a remote peak, or
(3) a luxury off-the-beaten-track trip where you don’t have to carry as much and the food is exceptionally good.
We are also available for weddings or other special celebrations.
Please get in touch if you’d like to schedule your own trip – refer to details about Private Journeys below on this page.
4-Day Family Journey
10-13 April 2026 (Fri-Mon during school holidays)
Maximum group size: 6 people
Cost: $4,435 for adult+teen; extra adult: $2,540; extra teen: $1,895
Meeting location: TBC
This journey is for parents and teenagers who enjoy tramping – to do so under the watchful eye of an expert guide, with the opportunity to meet other likeminded people. We can supply any equipment you need to borrow, and we’ll organise all of the food.
Have you wanted to go a little off-the-beaten-track, and do something longer than an overnighter, but haven’t known where to start? Let us help you break down the barriers!
This will be a self-sufficient trip where we’ll carry everything we need to be flexible, so we can change plans depending on how people are feeling and what the weather’s doing.
Please drop us a line if you’d like to learn more, we’d love to hear from you!
3-Day ‘Very Hard’ Light & Fast Transalpine Journey
24-27 April 2026 (ANZAC weekend)
Maximum group size: 6 people with 2 guides
Cost: $2,295 per person
Meeting location: TBC
This is the trip for those of you who like to move. We’ve never run a trip like this before – it’ll be an experiment. Even if you usually do some pretty impressive trips on your own or with your friends, doing this type of trip with a guide (or two) can introduce you to areas you may have never considered. We’ll get a great team together, organise the food and equipment, keep the navigation on point, and help the team deal with any really tricky spots.
The idea is that we develop a short list of challenging 3-day loops in different parts of the South Island, and set aside four days (Friday to Monday) to allow some flexibility. We’ll probably have to spend some time travelling on the days before or after the trip, using local accommodation (additional to trip cost), to make full use of the available days in the hills.
You’ll need to have proven experience moving quickly on uneven ground with a moderate pack. Yes, we’ll be aiming to go “light and fast,” but that doesn’t mean trail running. We’ll still be carrying tents, warm clothing, and three days of food. Depending on conditions, we may carry some alpine equipment too. But we’ll scrutinise what we take to make sure we only carry the essentials.
Get in touch if you’d like to be part of the conversation.
Where do the journeys go?
We undertake trips in a huge variety of places throughout the Southern Alps (we have a concession/permit for more than 50 locations). For those of you willing to do some real exploring, many of those locations have hardly been visited by anyone, even our guides.
When you book a guided journey with us, you’re signing up not for a particular location, but for a particular style and difficulty of trip over an agreed range of dates.
We’ll always have a ‘Plan A’ regarding where we go, but we’ll also have a few backup trip locations. Depending on the weather forecast a few days before the start, we may decide to go somewhere quite different if it avoids terrible weather. We want to provide you with a challenging trip, but also an enjoyable and safe one, so we need to be flexible. Fortunately, we have so many locations around the South Island / Te Wai Pounamu up our sleeve that we’re likely to find somewhere suitable for almost any weather forecast.
To give you an idea of the types of places we like to go, here are a few trips we’ve done over the last few years:
Mt Alexander
Traverse of Lyell Peak
Makarora Valley, across the Main Divide to Brewster Glacier
Opera and Libretto Ranges
Princess Bath and Mt Princess
Whitcombe River, Noisy Basin, and Misty Ridge
Butler Saddle
Traverse of the Toaroha Range
Hopkins to the Landsborough and back, twice across the Main Divide
Want to book a private journey?
Private trips are the best way to enjoy a journey tailored specifically to the style and difficulty level that YOU want.
If you’d like to book a private guided journey or instruction course with us, please refer to the table below for prices.
Some mobile devices do not show the heading row; the price columns are for (1) the base price for one person, and (2) the additional price for each extra person.
| Private Trip Length | Base Price (1 person) | Price per extra person |
|---|---|---|
| 1 day | NZ$ 1,710 | NZ$ 300 |
| 2 days | NZ$ 2,880 | NZ$ 600 |
| 3 days | NZ$ 4,050 | NZ$ 900 |
| 4 days | NZ$ 5,220 | NZ$ 1,200 |
| 5 days | NZ$ 6,390 | NZ$ 1,500 |
| 6 days | NZ$ 7,560 | NZ$ 1,800 |
| 7 days | NZ$ 8,730 | NZ$ 2,100 |
| 8 days | NZ$ 9,900 | NZ$ 2,400 |
Occasionally, depending on the requirements of your trip, we may need accommodation between our base and the start or end of the trip – such expenses will be additional to the costs shown in the above table. Please see our terms and conditions for more information.
We will be pleased to discuss the possibility of more than one guide on your trip (additional $1,100/day), or a porter to carry some weight (additional $550/day), or any other special requests. We can provide a quote for such requests at the time of your enquiry.
All dietary requirements can be catered for in our standard rates.
If you’d like to gift someone a guided trip or credit towards an instruction course, we also have vouchers available for sale!
