Roys Peak
Roys Peak was my first big hike on a trip to New Zealand. It came about in an interesting way, we were looking for a campground near Wanaka and read that “we kept being woken up by people waking up at 4am to go hiking”. That had me intrigued and I had to find out what hike it was.
It turn’s out a few years ago some Instagrammer took a picture of themselves at a view point at sunrise. As a result, many people are hiking this peak to get the shot. Shudder. You will, as a result, also find a billion articles on line about it. In the end to avoid all those people I decided to hike up before sunset.
Heading up at sunset was a great idea because this trail is completely open, with no trees or cover. At this time of year, about 5:30pm the sun starts to set behind the ridge, meaning that the hike up was in the shade and that was wonderful. The hike is really boring, it’s a wide 4x4 trail all the way. It’s continuous grade with little variation.
I stopped at the viewpoint to watch the sunset. On the website it’s unclear if you can camp at the peak, but I spoke to someone who was told by locals that you could, so I camped there overnight. The hike was boring, but the views and sunset was absolutely bloody fantastic. Seriously one of the best sunsets I’ve seen, ever.
But of course the Instagrammers couldn’t be avoided. I’d expected people to arrive early and at 5 o’clock a group of people hiked up and said “Oh look a tent”. Then stood by my tent and chatted, loudly. Then the blue tooth speaker person joined. Then more. Aaargh.
So I took my tent down, looked in horror at the many headlamps I could see coming up the trail and headed on up to the peak to watch the sunrise. The peak was full of people and blue tooth speaker person, so I headed to another bump a little away, put in my noise cancelling headphones and enjoyed the sunrise.
It was a spectacular sunrise, but not as good as the sunset. The walk down was long, boring, crowded, and monotonous. You aren’t doing this hike for the trail, you are doing it for the view.
Wouldn’t do it again, unless a friend wanted to see the view. Which was stunning. I think this hike also gave me plantar fasciitis from the just continuous down grade. Not sure, but it started not long after this.
Check out Isthmus Peak for an alternative.