We slept in the morning we were leafing Queenstown and enjoyed the delightful sound of rain gently falling on the camper roof. After our morning coffee, we packed up and hit the road heading for Lake Wanaka. Rainbow as the sun broke through the sky. On our way, we stopped at Puzzling World and cooked noodles with veggies for lunch. In the end, we decided we didn’t wanna go inside the exhibit but it would have been tempting to go in if we’d had younger children with us. We also got around to booking our RV sites and identifying freedom camping spots for the next few nights.
It was very windy when we arrived at Lake Wanaka and were not surprised to see whitecaps on the lake around the #ThatWanakaTree! It was so windy we decided to drive to the campground spot we’d booked about 20 minutes away on the lake.
We arrived at Hampshire Holiday Park – Glendhu Bay, but it was still very windy and chilly so we hunkered down in our camper until the wind subsided and then went for a shoreline walk.
We enjoyed another nice dinner in our RV, and then sat by the beach until the bugs came out as the sun went down. We listened to a podcast and played word games in the camper until we were tired enough to head to bed in preparation for our big hike the following morning..
As planned as soon as we woke up we drove straight for the Roy’s Peak parking lot so we could hopefully find an unoccupied spot. One of the reviews we’d read the previous night mentioned that the lot typically filled up before 8am on sunny days. We arrived with the lot about one-third full, and enjoyed our morning coffee and breakfast in our RV before gearing up to begin our hike up Roy’s peak!
The All Trails app warned us that the average time to hike up and down Roy’s Peak was 7 hours and 26 minutes! We’d hoped that it wouldn’t take us that like to climb up and down the 1,310 meter mountain, and likely it took us just under 5 hours to make it up and down. That said, it was a taxing climb but we made it, and the views at the top were spectacular!
The weather was a crazy mix of warm sun, cool breeze, cloudy, and some decent but temporary snow falling. It started out sunny and warm, with plenty of sheep beside the track, and plenty of sheep patties to avoid stepping in, but it was a beautiful start to the climb.
About halfway up the climb, clouds blew in, it got foggy and started to snow! We were prepared for weather like this but really didn’t expect to experience any snow given how beautiful the weather had been so far on our trip. The photo below is after the snow had stopped, and the fog had cleared out when we were over the halfway mark of the climb.
Almost at the summit, there was a very popular viewpoint for photos that we stopped at to take some pictures. We had to wait in line with other photographers for about 10-minutes before we could take our photos, including some photos of us that other hikers from Canada generously offered to take for us. The wait was well worth it as you can see from the next two photos:
The summit provided us with amazing views and a beautiful spot to sit and enjoy a well-earned rest and lunch.
And you can just see a little bit in the photos below, the mountain ranges across Lake Wanaka from Roy’s peak are the “Misty Mountains” from the Lord of the Rings movies. Because of the low clouds, as you can see in the two photos below, we only were able to enjoy occasional views of the “Misty Mountains” while at the top of Roy’s Peak. Even so, the contrast between the green around the lake, and the towering snowcapped mountains behind was breathtaking.
The hike down was much easier on our legs and knees than the hike up. As an added bonus the fog and snow were no where to be seen and we could see some beautiful views that were hidden to us on our way up the mountain.
On our way down at one point we heard a lone lamb bleating and then its mother responding some distance away. As they continued to exchange bleats the lamb eventually ran across the track in front of us and was eventually was reunited with its mother.
The lamb then decided it needed a soothing nurse as we walked by 😉
By the time we arrived at our RV at the base of the mountain we had walked almost 17km and climbed over 1,300 meters. Like the challenging “Mount Doom” hike on the North Island, climbing Roy’s Peak was well worth the effort!
After the hike, we hopped in our RV and drove to a beautiful freedom campsite on the edge of Lake Pukaki. Once we arrived their was some ambiguous signage that made us think that it might not still be a freedom campsite anymore. We are all diced hoping that we wouldn’t get busted, but we had a peaceful night with no interuptions. We could even see Mount Cook off in the distance, which was our destination for the next day.