New Zealand Update: Climbing Ben Lomond

Sometimes it’s difficult to balance life with work but it’s something that I’ve always found important to do. Our time in New Zealand has definitely been an effort to put more of the adventures and the life part of the balance forward and let the work take the back seat for a while, but we still find ourselves working a lot of hours and spending far more time working than playing. The difference here, however, is that our jobs give us no stress and are far less demanding than our careers that we left from home.

Either way, after another week of work, Hilary and I decided to capitalize on a day off to head to Queenstown to do some hiking. We only had one day off so we set our eyes on climbing a peak called Ben Lomond. It sits immediately above to town and there is a gondola that leaves from the edge of Queenstown that takes you up to a place where the hike starts from. You can skip the gondola if you want and walk up a steep trail instead, but why walk when you can ride?

Once you’re at the top of the gondola, there is an expensive restaurant with awesome views over Queenstown, a few gift shops, and a luge track. We got a few tickets to do the luge with our gondola passes so we decided to do the luge when we got back down from the hike (stay tuned for more on that later).

There are also a lot of mountain bike tracks off of the gondola and even more that you can access from along the hiking trail up to Ben Lomond. So needless to say, I’m quite eager to return soon with my bike.

The Trail to Ben Lomond:

Our hike started just past where the gondola drops you off and heads off through pine forest. You’re not in the trees for long however, and most of the hike is exposed and above the treeline like most of the hiking seems to be in New Zealand. After an hour or so we reached a saddle where the trail forks. One way takes you over the back side of the saddle to a popular walk called the Moonlight track, and the other starts the steep climb to the peak of Ben Lomond. Since the title of this post is called “Climbing Ben Lomond,” I’ll let you guess which way we took at the fork.

The climb gets quite steep at this point in the trail, and even though it seems like it’s not very far to the top, it seems to take quite a long time to reach. There were also quite a few other people out on the trail that day and we were constantly moving over on the trail to let groups pass on their way down, or getting stuck behind slower groups in front of us. There were also some groups that were faster than us that we had to move aside for as well but I was hoping that I didn’t have to admit to that…

Once we finally reached the top, we found a spot further down the ridge for ourselves and ate our lunch and laid in the sun. There wasn’t a breath of wind and we could see for miles around us in all directions so it was easy to just sit and become completely immersed in the views around us. To Hilary’s dismay, there was also a Kea that was hanging out at the peak that was trying to scavenge people’s lunches. If you’ve never seen a Kea, they’re quite a unique bird and are the only mountain parrots in the world. They’re quite rare but are very intelligent and can be a bit on the aggressive side as well.

From the peak, we could see back down the ridge that we had climbed up all of the way down into Queenstown. Lake Wakatipu also stretched out below us, the Remarkables and Coronet Peak were in full display, and in the valley behind us was Moke Lake and an endless number of peaks stretching back towards Wanaka. We could even see the distinct peak of Mount Aspiring and other glacier capped peaks.

Luging at the top of the Gondola:

After relaxing on the peak we made our way down from the peak and stopped at the luge track to use the 4 tickets that we had gotten with our gondola passes. If you’ve ever seen the show Departures, this is the same luge track that they do in the second New Zealand episode. And if you haven’t seen Departures, then you should stop reading this and start watching that show instead. On a side note, there is also a part of that episode where Justin and Scott do the “Extreme Roundabout” while they are in Queenstown. Well, it turns out that the roundabout where they did this has since been turned into a set of stop lights. What is up with that? Anyways, I’ve gotten myself very side-tracked again so let’s get back to it.

The way that the Luge track works is that you jump on a small chairlift that takes you to the top of the track. From there you grab one of the little carts where you get a safety briefing where they really just tell you to push forward on the handles to go fast and pull back to slow down. Unlike other luge tracks that I’ve done (like the one on our trip to Switzerland) you aren’t fixed to any rails or set tracks. You get to steer and go as fast or slow as your want down a track about 10 or 15 feet wide.

So my first goal, of course, was to see if I could make it down the entire track without using any brakes. It turns out that this was a bad idea, however, and I almost flipped my cart onto its side around the first corner to the smell burning rubber. It didn’t take long to get the hang of it after that and Hilary and I were off to the races. You can actually go very fast and there are some awesome corners and little drops. It probably goes without saying, but I’m pretty sure I won both of the runs down the track. Don’t ask Hilary, as she might tell you something different.

After the luging, we watched the sun begin to set from the viewing deck at the top of the gondola. Even though it doesn’t seem like the gondola sits very high above town, the view over the lake and to the Remarkables in the background is really incredible. I’m definitely hoping to make it back to get some photos from that area in the winter when there will be snow covering the peaks.

Our next adventure after climbing Ben Lomond was bungee jumping. Check out my next post to read up on that and see the photos!