Excursions into Mount Aspiring National Parks, New Zealand’s third-largest national park straddling the mountain divide between the Otago and Westland regions, usually involve long overnight tramps, steep altitude gains, and taxing descents over loose rock.

The drudgery is worth it, certainly, for the alpine wilderness is spectacular, but there’s another, easier way (besides a helicopter ride): the fabulous Rob Roy Track in the West Matukituki Valley, 54km west of Wanaka.

This 3hr hike on a well-graded path takes you into the Rob Roy Basin to 765m and face to face with a huge wall of ice clinging precariously to the mountain and several impressive waterfalls cascading down sheer rock cliffs.

We were thrilled to learn that the track had just reopened after an 18-months closure due to a slip and the next day drove out to the trail head at Raspberry Flats car park. In a vehicle without high clearance, accessing the trail head on the rutted dirt road with several streams to ford may already be your greatest challenge. If you’ve got a rental, consider hitching or car-sharing to the trailhead.

From Raspberry Flats car park, the track initially leads up into the valley, through yellow carpets of wildflowers and soon comes up to a rope swing bridge spanning the West Matukituki River. On the opposite river bank, the trail disappears into beech and native forest and gradually climbs alongside Rob Roy Stream churning through a narrow gorge to the Lower Lookout.

Keep following the trail and work your way across a scree filled gully and some broken rock until the track emerges from the bush into the Rob Roy Basin.

This is a truly great spot, directly vis-a-vis the hanging glaciers beneath Mount Rob Roy and waterfalls spilling over the cliff’s edge and pouring down the barren rock face. You return by the same track.