Glimpsing Rob Roys Glacier

On our second day in Wanaka, we opted for a slightly tamer option than the first: hiking to Rob Roys Glacier, a shorter trail (only 10km) that was a bit further from town (50km).

The excitement started early in the day – the last few kilometers of the road had 9 or 10 river fording opportunities. Wyatt made it through five of them before we decided that the 6th was a little deepish-looking for him. We parked (next to two waterfalls, of course) and walked about 20 minutes to the official trailhead before continuing into a super picturesque, wide alpine valley with steep mountain walls on both sides.

Turns out one aspect of wide alpine valleys with steep walls is that they do an excellent job of channeling wind. It was a strong, gusty day too – the wind stole my hat once (I’m sure I looked very adventurous running across the grass to catch up with it), my coat once, and even pushed us fully backwards once or twice. After heading into the wind for 1 or 2km, we arrived at a swing bridge that would take us over the creek. Crossing was a bit of an adventure, but we made it without problem (me with my hat in hand the whole time).

Then it was a nice 3k saunter up to the lower viewing area, along a creek and through native forest. We weren’t that close to the glacier when we arrived, but the binoculars Elisse keeps in her pack gave us a pretty cool view. Since ascending 30 minutes to the upper viewing point wasn’t recommended by the DOC due to avalanche danger, we snacked for a while and then started back.

On the way back down, the clouds cleared a bit and some sun started to hit the whole valley – super beautiful. After a nice walk back down to the trailhead, a Kiwi couple offered us a ride the rest of the way to our car (over the intervening river fords). Then we jumped in Wyatt and headed back to town, stopping along the way at a lovely family-owned vineyard, Rippon.

(PS / side note: I was pretty psyched to see the glacier (‘glay-cee-er’ in NZ accent) even from that close. Little did I know that we’d be getting way more up close and personal within a week’s time. But that still to come…)