Days 17-20 Lake Wanaka

Lake Wanaka is a decent-sized lake north of Queenstown that is home to all kinds of outdoor sports and activities, hence the reason we went there. We spent a total of 5 days/4 nights there which I will attempt to summarize in chronological order below.

Day 17 - Arrival and Mtb
We rolled into Lake Wanaka to our Airbnb in the early afternoon after a drive from Manapouri (about 3 hours in the car). The place has a fantastic view of the lake and surrounding mountains as well as fresh rolls, juice, and coffee each morning. It was great! Lake Wanaka is surrounded by mountains and was dug by glaciers back in the day. There are still glaciers higher up in the mountains, but we'll get to that in a few days. :)

View from our AirBnB

View from the patio table

Bridget wanted to rest, so she took a nap and I went mountain biking (our Airbnb had a bike I could use). It was overcast (forecast called for rain, but it didn't end up raining) and a bit on the cooler side. I biked out around the lake a bit and then ventured through some single-track (narrow, winding trails) in the woods. There is a pretty active bike club that maintains the trails, so they were really nice. I got in about 2.5 hours of riding (about 25 miles) and only a handful of wipeouts (but nothing too serious). The GoPro videos are so shaky they'd make you sick, so I'll spare you that experience. :)

Quick view from the beach on the way back

Day 18 - Canyoning
With the steep, glacier-carved valleys around the greater Lake Wanaka region, there are lots of canyons with ever-flowing water. These canyons are filled with waterfalls, whirlpools, and deep basins filled with fresh new zealand water. So, as with anything adventurous, exciting, and slightly dangerous, we signed up to adventure our way down through one of these canyons (based upon a friend's recommendation). So, with a guide (a pretty cool, funny one at that) leading the way (and manning the double-belay setup in spots), we rappelled (abseiled), slid, swam, and jumped our way down the waterfalls and sheer rock faces.  Rappelling is fun, but rappelling down a waterfall with the water thundering onto you is a blast! I put my GoPro to good use, so see a quick video below (the others were too large, so I need to edit them shorter before I can post due to file size limitations...). At the final spot in the canyon, there was a nice 20ft cliff to jump off, so we of course did that a few times. :) The water was cold, but the wetsuits we had kept us nice and warm-ish.

Gear on and ready to go!

Halfway down and still having fun!

Jump from 20ft cliff

Day 3 - Wakeboarding and Rob Roy Glacier Hike
After recovering from canyoning, I did a wakeboard session on Lake Wanaka in the morning. The water was nice and refreshing, which means pretty chilly but comfortable with a wetsuit on. The boat driver was super nice and found/made some smooth water despite the breeze and other boaters on the lake.

Enjoying the water

Catching some air

Post-wakeboard photo

After wakeboarding, we headed straight for the mountains! As I mentioned earlier in the post, there are still some glaciers in the area. One of the more famous and accessible glaciers is the Rob Roy Glacier. It's about 32 miles out of town (most on a gravel road), but lots of folks make the journey out there. The scenery is spectacular. The hike up to the viewpoint we went to is almost 4 miles with a flat section at the start and uphill from there. The glacier is hanging out at the top of the mountain (as they usually do), and the glacial stream is a thundering river down at the lower elevations as the water passes over and around boulders in its path. The canyons created by the glaciers and now occupied by the streams are pretty densely populated with trees fed by the water so we were in the shade for most of the hike. Once we got to the top, we popped out onto a clearing with a panoramic view of the glacier (see below). The clouds never really pulled all of the way up and off the top of the glacier, but we had some blue sky peek through a few times. It was really cool. As the sun popped in and out of the clouds, the view shifted slightly to show the water shimmering on the rocks as it crept its way down the cliffs, the blue hue of the glacial ice at the edge of the glacier, and the spray from the water pounding off the rocks as it shoved its way to the valley floor.

This is where you walk really quickly (Bridget is the little orange dot in the lower left corner hoping the boulder doesn't give way!)

The indigenous birds are preyed upon by invasive animals (possums, rats, etc.) so there are traps all over the place with blue markers showing where they are located. This is the 9th trap on this trail.

Panorama of the Rob Roy Glacier (click to make bigger)

View of the huge waterfall off to the west with the valley in the background

View on the trail down

We finished off the day with some drinks and apps with our AirBnB hosts and caught some wisps of a sunset.

Sunset

Day 4 - Mountain Biking and Mt Iron
We both went mountain biking together this morning. There is a small forest with well-groomed single track trails. It's called Sticky Forest, but it wasn't sticky so I'm not sure where the name came from. But it had some nice trails and we rode around for about 2.5hrs.

On the trail

After mountain biking, we grabbed a snack and went and hiked Mt Iron which is a small-ish mountain at the edge of town. It was only a few hundred feet of elevation, but gave great views of the very small amount of flat land around. We capped off our last night with dinner out at a place across the street from the water.

Pano from the top of Mt Iron (click to make bigger)

Sun and Sky