This is a rare privilege of access into one of New Zealand’s most dramatic and remote alpine landscapes. Departing Queenstown by private helicopter, you fly across Lake Wakatipu and into the untouched Earnslaw Burn — a vast hanging valley famed for its towering waterfalls and glacier, and featured in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

Upon landing, time slows. Your picnic is set beneath multiple cascading waterfalls, with the glacier looming above and nothing but silence, scale and elemental beauty around you. There is time to explore, photograph, and even step behind the falls or feel the icy glacial water underfoot, should you wish.

Entirely private, unhurried, and profoundly cinematic, this experience is less an excursion than a moment of deep immersion — an unforgettable encounter with New Zealand at its most majestic and inaccessible.

Very few people ever set foot in the Earnslaw Burn. Accessible only by helicopter, this vast hanging valley is one of New Zealand’s most remote and cinematic alpine landscapes, home to towering waterfalls and a dramatic hanging glacier seen in The Hobbit. A private landing and unhurried picnic here offers not just a view, but a profound sense of solitude, scale, and privilege—an experience defined by access, silence, and awe rather than activity.

Heli Picnic at Middle-Earth Waterfalls

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