QUEENSTOWN – Outdoor Climbing (in Wanaka)

by Burpees For Life · Published 28/01/2021 · Updated 09/03/2021

Once upon a time – Issy and I flew down to Queenstown to do some outdoor climbing – but our plane couldn’t land and we ended up flying all the way back to Auckland .

Thankfully we managed to land the next day, but unfortunately we landed too late to do any outdoor climbing. *boo*

And after our recent trip I’m thinking that perhaps we just aren’t destined to ever climb in Queenstown. You see, on the day of our booking – a storm front had rolled into Queenstown, so our guide from Basecamp Adventures gave us two options;

Rug up warm, walk 45 minutes to the crag and spend the day climbing in Queenstown.
Drive to Wanaka, walk 20 seconds to the crag and spend the day climbing (in the sunshine).

No brainer right? Especially after our Guide told Isabelle that Wanaka had an amazing icecream shop that we could stop at on the way home, so I know which option had his vote. 😉

I’ve driven across the Crown Ranges to Wanaka before, so it was nice to have a local drive us over instead, it gave me the chance to just look out the window and marvel at the scenery, which is quite simply epic.

We set up for a day of climbing at the Roadside Attraction Crag. This Craig had climbs suitable for everyone in our family ranging from an “easy” 12 right through to a 26, which is WELL outside even our Mountain Goats current climbing ability.

We all climbed a lot, by mid afternoon Elias had enough and was happy to laze on the grass in the sunshine while our guide wore out Isabelle (we did tell him good luck – our mountain goat can climb for days). 😉