Roy’s Peak:

The last post that I put up covered our first few weeks in Wanaka. Since then, we haven’t done any major exploration as we’ve been spending time doing smaller things around Wanaka, settling into the town, and bike riding.

The one hike that we have been able to do, however, is Roy’s Peak which is the most well-known and popular in Wanaka.

Climbing Roy’s Peak:

The car park for Roy’s peak is about a 10 minute drive outside of Wanaka. This means that it’s one of the closest hikes to the town of Wanaka. On one hand, this means that it gets very busy and the car park fills up quickly. But, it also means that you get really great views back down to town and out across Lake Wanaka.

The trail starts out from the parking lot as a double-track road that switches back-and-forth all of the way up to mountain to the very top. It seems that many of the hikes in the area follow these types of tracks, which makes the climbing easy, because the road is never very steep. But, because the face of the mountain itself is very steep, it makes it feel like your progress is very slow since each switchback is so long in either direction.

The good news with Roy’s Peak, however, is that it doesn’t take long before you start getting great views. There is very little for tall vegetation on Roy’s Peak, which means that your view is never obstructed by trees or tall bushes. If it’s a warm day, however, it also means that you have to face the full force of the sun with no help from the shade.

About three quarters of the way up the hike, you reach the ridgeline where you get views in all directions around you. From here, the trail continues up the ridge until you reach the peak itself. The views from the ridge are really awesome and you can see back down into the town of Wanaka, across Lake Wanaka and into Glendhu Bay, and all of the way out to the Treble Cone Ski Resort and Mount Aspiring National Park.

There is one place along the ridge that people call “Instagram Point” because everyone stops there to take the same popular photo. In fact, when we went by this point, there was a line up of people waiting for their turn to go out along the ridge to take the picture.

It took us about 2 hours and 45 minutes to get to the peak itself after stopping several times. We then ate lunch at the top, had a nap in the grass, explored a little further along the ridgeline, and then headed back down.

The lake looks really cool from high up on the ridge and you can see a bunch of individual islands in the middle of the lake that all blend together into the horizon when you are at town-level. The other peaks and mountains of the area also look awesome from high up on Roy’s Peak and looking around at them makes you want to climb all of the rest.

It then took us about 2 hours to get back down to the bottom. Because the trails in this area of New Zealand are grass and aren’t very steep it takes nearly as long to go down as it does to climb up.

Even though Roy’s Peak is very popular and there are always lots of people on the trail, it is more than worth the climb. It’s popular for a reason which is partly because it is so close to town, but it also offers spectacular views from the top.