New Zealand's Alpine Escape — Roy's Peak, the famous Wānaka Tree, Mount Aspiring National Park, and a town that outshines its famous neighbor Queenstown
Wānaka is the quieter, more authentic alternative to Queenstown — a small alpine town on the shores of the fourth-largest lake in New Zealand, backed by the Southern Alps and the gateway to Mount Aspiring National Park. Roy's Peak, a 5–6 hour return hike above town, delivers one of the most iconic photographs in New Zealand: the lake, the mountains, and the valley spread below. The That Wanaka Tree — a lone willow growing from a rock shelf in the shallows of the lake — became one of the most photographed spots in the Southern Hemisphere. Winter skiing at Treble Cone and Cardrona; summer swimm…
The Wānaka basin was inhabited by Māori for centuries as a seasonal food-gathering ground, accessed via the Haast Pass. European settlement began in the 1860s during the Otago gold rush, when the Wānaka valley was used as a route to the goldfields. The lake district remained pastoral and remote through most of the 20th century; the town itself had a population of only a few hundred until the 1990s skiing and outdoor tourism boom. The Wānaka Tree, grown from a seedling that took root in a rock in the lake sometime in the 1960s, rose to global social media fame around 2017–2019 and has been a c…