Roy's Peak
Wanaka, New Zealand
New Zealand is famous for hiking trails that weave their way through some genuinely unreasonable landscapes. This one is the most photographed of them, and still worth the queue.
Olivia Rhye
Published in Adventure
Sixteen kilometres, twelve hundred metres of climb, and no shade for any of it. The track is not technical, which is exactly why people underestimate it.
Introduction
The trailhead sits six kilometres outside town on the lakefront road. There is a car park, a long-drop toilet and a sign that tells you the return trip takes five to six hours, which is honest rather than optimistic.
From the gate the track climbs immediately and does not stop. It is farmland for the first two hours — open, exposed and grazed — and the views arrive early enough that most people stop far too often in the first kilometre.
The famous photograph is taken from a spur about forty minutes below the summit. There is usually a line for it, and the light is best before nine, which means leaving the car park in the dark.
Everyone photographs the spur and nobody photographs the last forty minutes, which is the part you actually remember.
Above the spur the farmland gives way to tussock and the wind picks up properly. The summit itself is a trig point and a view down the length of the lake, and it is almost always ten degrees colder than the car park.
Coming down is harder on the knees than going up is on the lungs. Poles help more than they look like they should, and the last hour is the one where people turn ankles.
Software and tools
Download the map before you leave town; reception disappears about twenty minutes above the gate and does not return until you are on the way back down.
Three litres of water per person in summer, more than you think in the way of sunscreen, and a layer you will not want to carry but will want at the top.
Other resources
If you are planning to walk it, three things decide how the day goes:
- Start before sunrise, both for the light and for the heat.
- Check whether the track is closed for lambing — it usually is in October.
- Book accommodation in town rather than driving in from Queenstown.
It is a busy track and it will stay one. If solitude is the point, there are quieter climbs an hour further up the valley with almost the same view and none of the queue.
But if you are only in Wanaka for a day, this is the one to do, and it is worth setting an alarm for.
Conclusion
Roy's Peak is not a hard walk, it is a long one, and the difference catches people out every summer.
Start early, carry more water than feels sensible, and give yourself six hours rather than four.
Do that and it is one of the best days on foot anywhere in the South Island.
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