Travel: Hasst Highway, Southern Alps

The glorious Haast Highway, the last mountain pass to be constructed over the Southern Alps, still exudes a "last frontier" sense of escapism.

Connecting Central Otago with the West Coast, the Haast Pass wasn't completed until 1966 and received its complete tarmac surface only in 1995.

The pass route had long been used by Maori on greenstone (pounamu) gathering trips across the Main Divide, into Westland.

Julius von Haast named the route after himself, after crossing the pass in 1863. Interestingly, he wasn't the first European to do so - a gold prospector, Charles Cameron, achieved that feat a few weeks earlier.

For the next century, narrow bush tracks were the only means of passage, until the highway officially opened in 1966. This magnificent 140km-long alpine route is a panoramic marvel. The highway winds through soaring mountains, gushing waterfalls, sprawling valleys, primeval rainforest and raging rapids.

I've just completed another trip through the pass in the height of summer, and although the beating sunshine was warm and welcoming, the alpine aesthetics are certainly accentuated when the cooler months cloak the peaks in snow.

So what are the signature sights along the mountain highway?

Starting from the southern entrance in Wanaka, pass by the cobalt-blue expanse of Lake Hawea and the Heidi-country gorgeousness of the Makarora Valley before stopping by the Blue Pools.

The easy 30-minute return walk threads its way through silver beech forest and across boardwalks and a swing-bridge to the iridescent pools in the Makarora River. These beautifully still azure pools are a feeding ground for large brown and rainbow trout, which you can spot with crystal-clear precision from the bridge.

Thirty minutes down the road, amid the towering peaks and an ancient podocarp rainforest, stop off at Fantail Falls. Despite myriad native birds whooshing and trilling overhead, this waterfall doesn't take its name from the birdlife, but because the base of the fall splays out in a triangular fantail-shape.

Apparently, these are the most photographed of all the falls on the Haast Highway, but I think the Thunder Creek Falls, a further 30 minutes up the road, are photogenically superior.

Hurtling down into the Haast River from a 28m high drop, it's a spectacular and noisy sight. The waterfall's height also illustrates how high the glacier field was during the last ice age, 12,000 years ago.

For more waterfall magic, Roaring Billy is a 25-minute return walk, through a densely vegetated grove of emerald-coloured tree ferns.

But the trump card, heralding your arrival into Haast and the West Coast, is the ominously named Gates of Haast. This narrow crossing over the Haast River, hemmed in by vertiginous rock walls and gigantic schist boulders, is a striking sight as the gushing waters thunder through the gorge.