Hiking Queenstown, the Tiki Trail up to the Ben Lomond Summit

We got up casually this morning after yesterday’s prompt start. Today’s plan was to head into Queenstown and make the most of the amazing weather and do a long hike up to the summit of Ben Lomond, a peak of 1,748 meters high and an overall elevation gain of 1,438m for us hikers, the most of any of the hikes we’ve attempted thus far (although we realised this afterwards when we got down). The campsite here does a free shuttle to and from Queenstown, which is brilliant as it’s a $25 cab journey otherwise. Not being entirely sure of the start of the trek, we fortunately found it at next to the gondola. Tempting as it was to just nip up the gondola it would only take us up a 500m elevation, so we’d still have to do the rest, and we’d never take the gondola anyway being spendthrift backpackers and semi impressive hikers.

The Tiki Trail basically winds up from Queenstown, through the forest, to the upper gondola station, where literally all the activities are. There’s luging, paragliding, bungee jumping and canyon swinging, food, drink, mountain biking, ziplining, basically a lot of fun things. We sped on through all this frivolity to begin the main event; the Ben Lomond trail. Through conifer forests, which are surprisingly non-native and they’re currently trying to temper the excessive spread of these trees across the mountainsides as they’re destroying the natural environment of native animals. Although, as Amelia highlighted, they do look nicer than the natural shrubbery they’re trying to encourage back. Once you’re through this band of forest it’s unobstructed views all the way up to the summit, and some pretty amazing views they are. We were very fortunate with the weather as pretty much cloudless skies greeted up at the summit. It wasn’t even particularly windy at the top, even though a few patches of snow were a quiet reminder that at those altitudes the air temperature is still pretty low, despite the high sunburn risk (no I didn’t get sunburnt actually, I know, a big surprise). 

The views encompass the city (it’s a tiny city, nothing like what I imagined), across Lake Wakatipu, and around to the 180 degree vista of the snow capped, southern alps. Absolutely beautiful. We headed back and had lunch at a comfy spot on Ben Lomond’s Saddle and arrived back at the upper gondola station at 3:30ish. Amelia had a real urge to go luging (little toboggan with wheels and a break that you steer down a track by gravity). She persuaded me it would be good and we took a couple of runs down, a lot more fun than I’d imagined. The videos from Amelia’s go pro are pretty hilarious (mostly her chatting away to herself and screaming at bumps).

Arriving back on dry land in Queenstown there was still time for an ice cream at a famous parlour on the waterfront, which Amelia expertly directed us to (she got confused for a while then realised we were standing directly outside it), and a cheeky pint at another waterfront establishment. There was also a drummer busker (awful) and Happy the amazing singing sheepdog (owner playing a song on the guitar and singing while Happy howls occasionally, incredibly cute). Queenstown’s very nice, we’ll see what it’s like in the rain tomorrow though.

Arriving back we got our customary barbecue down and heading to bed soon, very tired after today’s long walk, not surprised that I’ve done 32,000 steps today.