Mount Aspiring is the third largest National Park in New Zealand. It is named after the park's highest mountain, Mount Aspiring, also known as Tititea (Maori). Its peak is 3083 m above sea level. Situated at the heart of New Zealand's Southern Alps, Mount Aspiring is surrounded by mountaintops with peaks between 2000 and 3000 m. They are the results of ongoing, uplifting forces created by tectonic movement between the Australian and Pacific Plate.
Other forces act from above, such as the remaining ice sheets (glaciers) as well as rain and snow that continuously erode and shape the Southern Alps until today. The park itself contains over 100 glaciers, most of which seem to decrease in size due to global warming. Researchers have found that the Dart Glacier shrinks about 50 m annually.
Mount Aspiring covers an overall area of 355,543 ha. Within, visitors may observe alpine plateaux and tussock lands, podocarp rainforests, deep cut valleys and gorges as well as mountain blue pools, rivers and waterfalls. The best way to observe these landscapes is the Routeburn Track, one of New Zealand's "Great Walks". Additionally, Mount Aspiring is also part of the Te Wahipounamu World Heritage Area.