Here’s a few pictures from the hike (Kiwi’s call it Tramping) up Ben Lomond. The walk starts from Queenstown, so its a popular one for people staying in the area. Its not a long walk, maybe about 14kms to get up and back down, but there’s a fair bit of up hill to get to the 1700 metre summit.
This was another early morning raid, while Si Phong had lie in, so other than an other German walker, I pretty much had the place to myself again. The first third of the walk started in woodland, ascending up to the Skyline Gondola. This area is shared with Quad Bikers and MTB’s and I could see some fantastic looking trails running off the main access path.
Things opened up a bit once I got to the Gondola level, which is about 700m up. I now got on to the Ben Lomond track proper, which consists of two sections…a reasonably gentle climb on exposed grassland called the Ben Lomond saddle, followed by the steeper rockier ascent up to the peak.
Once I got past the saddle and on to the ascent, there were some great views of the Remarkables mountain ranges on the other side. Walking conditions were very good, but I couldn’t help feeling a little tightening of the chest, maybe because the climb felt surprisingly isolated considering that I could not have been more than 6kms from the town centre.
Being the highest peak near to Queenstown, the summit gave a 360 panorama of the whole area. Really, who needs to blow several hundred on a helicopter flight when you can be right up and in it with a good walk?
I got back down the mountain in double quick time. On the way down, I encountered many walkers heading up, in direct contrast to my solitary ascent. The walk took less than four hours as opposed to the 6-8 hours suggested in the visitor info, so I was able to meet Si Phong for lunch and a well earned reward of Queenstown’s famous Fergburger. A great walk with a nice, tasty end.
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