The Mātukituki River is a short braided river in the Southern Alps of New Zealand's South Island. Both its West Branch and East Branch originate from the Main Divide mountain ranges near Mount Aspiring / Tititea. Their largely glacier-fed waters each flow for approximately before joining near Camerons Flat. After this confluence, the Mātukituki River leaves the boundaries of Mount Aspiring National Park and continues for another to exit into Lake Wānaka at the lake's southwestern edge. Six glaciers feed tributary streams to the Mātukituki River, the largest being the Upper Volta Glacier, Rob Roy Glacier, Maud Francis Glacier, and the Avalanche Glacier. From Camerons Flat onwards, the river is increasingly braided until it passes through a narrow gorge and under the West Wanaka bridge just before Lake Wānaka. History Most of the Southern Alps started over 220 million years ago as sediment and rock on top of volcanic rocks on the seafloor. Intense heat and pressure consolidated the rock, and then uplifted it to form the Main Divide. The present landscape was shaped by glacial processes during the ice ages, when huge glaciers filled and scoured out the valleys. The area around Mount Aspiring, called Tititea by the Māori, has a long history of Māori tribes coming from as far as Coastal Otago and the Foveaux Strait to the inland lakes to collect kākāpō, kererū, kākā and tūī from the forest. Moa would have also have lived along the forest edges for the first 200 years of Māori settlement. The historic Māori iwi (tribes) of Kāti Māmoe and Ngāi Tahu both had named settlements around the shores of Lakes Wanaka and Hāwea, including Nehenehe on the northern banks of the mouth of the Mātukituki River, which they called "Mātakitaki". Ovens for cooking tī kōuka (cabbage tree) roots have been found at several sites on the lake shore. Ngāi Tahu recorded Mātakitaki as a (food-gathering place) for (eels), (cabbage tree root), and (bracken fernroot). The first European to see Mount Aspiring was government surveyor John Turnbull Thompson in 1857. The West Mātukituki Valley was explored by James Hector in 1862. Sheep and cattle farming began progressing up the valley in the 1870s. Fauna and flora Today, beech is the dominant forest in the Mātukituki Valley. Red beech prefers warmer valley sites, and is common just below Aspiring Hut. Silver beech grows increasingly towards the wetter, western end of the valley,