If you spend some time in Wanaka, there’s a good chance you’ll hear about the must hike up to Roy’s Peak. We decided to take on this classic Kiwi tramp with the added challenge of bringing our splitboards along for the adventure.

The trail itself was only a 6km drive from our holiday park heading in the direction towards Mt. Aspiring National Park. We pulled into the tiny carpark filled with rental vehicles and began climbing up steep switchbacks through open grazed farmland and magnificent views of Lake Wanaka below with our splits on our backs.

We continued further up the switchbacks gaining some mean elevation up to the snowline (~1000m), and where it was finally time to switch over to skinning. Due to the hike being a popular tourist tramp year-round, we were lucky enough to already have a well set-in track for the majority of our ski tour up to the summit.

With the winds increasing as we climbed higher up the ridge, we decided to break trail around the backside to the summit of Roy’s where views of Wanaka and its 360º surrounding could be seen for days! From the top of Roy’s 1578m peak we switched over to board mode and traversed lookers right along the ridge before our descent down the front side of the mountain.

We shredded down the main face while trying to keep up with the remaining sunlight. A mix of soft powder turns at the top lead us down further into solar affected natural moguls and some showing bush. Our fun yet short 500m cruise back down to the end of the snowline forced us to swap back over to hiking mode and finish the trek back down the switchbacks and farm fields to the carpark. A total 16km round trip in 6 hours made for a great bluebird day tramp and tour.

Posted by Marisa