Roy's Peak

A small winding road runs over the Crown Range connecting Wanaka with Queenstown, a road boasting that it is New Zealand's highest public road. Stuart and I decided to take this road and explore the area between Wanaka and Queenstown. Our first stop was an historic inn - the Cardrona Hotel, established in 1863. The inn was a very popular old-time inn with large fireplaces, antlered candle chandeliers and wooden benches. We stopped for a brief look, along with a cursory glance at the old post office and art studio (the only buildings in the village) before continuing along to the roads highest point where there was a viewpoint looking over Queenstown. We descended down into the valley heading towards Kawarau River, a filming location for the pillars of the kings in lord of the rings and a popular jet boat route. The bright clear green-blue water swept into a steep sided gorge with great views from a gravel track that ran along the hillside beside the river. A kilometre further up this track was the chard vineyard and seeing as we were not far we decided to pop in for a free wine-tasting. The wine was fantastic and we bought a bottle to have later. We decided to take the highway back to Wanaka, bypassing roaring meg gorge and numerous fruit orchards before making it back to the town.

That evening we decided to head up Roy's peak, a 11km hike which ascended a total of 1100m. The route was torturous ascending straight up the mountain in a series of gruelling switchbacks. Roy's Peak is the highest of a series of peaks which make up a steep-side knife edge ridgeline that dominates the western side of lake Wanaka. Our legs felt made of jelly and were searing in pain by the time we dragged ourselves to the summit. We were joined there by Leinna, a german girl who chatted to us at the top as we watched the sunset over the gorgeous 360 view across all the surrounding peaks, rivers and lakes. The view was magical as the sunset casting a cocktail of colours into the sky, it was difficult to absorb all that you were seeing. After the sunset we headed back down the mountain finally reaching our van at 11.30pm where we gave Leinna and her sister (who opted out of the summit) a lift back to town as they had hitchhiked to the start of the hike. We were very thankful to put our heads down that evening.