November 28th-30th, 2019
Rain set in as I left the Fiordland area so I spent a couple
of nights in a small town called Lumsden.
CamperMate had glowing reviews of this small hamlet that has totally
embraced Freedom Campers. Right in the
middle of the town, around the old defunct railway station is an area dedicated
to both self contained and non-self contained campers. There’s a public toilet, an area to wash
dishes and even the little library across the road provides free wi-fi with the
password taped right on their front window…pretty sweet.
Lumsden's Freedom Camping spot:
The weather improved so I headed northwest towards
Queenstown, originally named in honour of Queen Victoria. I had heard about Queenstown from paragliding
pilots back in Canada as it is the primo place to fly in the country and
definitely the tandem capital for both paragliding and hang gliding in New
Zealand. The small city of around 15,000
sits on Lake Wakapitu, a Z shaped lake formed during the last ice age. The mountains around the lake on the approach
to town were beautiful including a lookout called the “Devil’s Staircase”…great
name.
During my trip, I've almost pulled over 3-4 times to take a picture of fields I've seen that are filled with sheep...but this one takes the cake. All of these guys had recently been sheered. You can see that they could spread out a little more towards me but perhaps their pulling an "Emperor Penguin" trick and sticking together for warmth!
Lake Wakatipu
Lake Wakatipu and the view from the Devil's Staircase:
There is a single road into Queenstown that follows along
the lakeside with houses and hotels on either side. This is a recipe for traffic congestion at
various times of the day and as I approached the downtown area, locating
parking was definitely a challenge. I
lucked out in a seemingly full parking lot as someone left as I was circling around. I walked a few blocks into town and since it
was a windy day I had no plans of trying to paraglide but I knew that there was
a frisbee golf course so that was my plan.
Supposedly you could rent a disc at stores in town but I decided I’d buy
one. One of the first shops that I
passed by had a collection of 20-30 frisbees and I found one I liked. For a moment I thought maybe I should look
around but then decided what the hell, just get one and don’t waste time
looking around. It was a fancy store
with hiking equipment and clothing and the disc was $30 but I figured that was
probably only five bucks over the going rate.
The lady behind the counter was friendly and I was happy to have secured
my frisbee that quickly. Well as I left
the store, two doors down was another store with racks and racks of 100+
frisbees…damn, I’d acted a bit too quickly.
Oh well, the one I had bought was manufactured in New Zealand so it will
be a cool one to bring home.
The downtown area was crammed with tourists mulling
about. Queenstown is known as the
adrenaline capital of New Zealand so there were many tour companies advertising
activities ranging from paragliding and hang gliding to jet boats, bungy
jumping (this is where bungy jumping started!), sky diving and tours to Milford
Sound. There were so many of these
storefronts that I don’t know how tourists picked one. The area also sported numerous bars and
restaurants and felt like Whistler’s Village back in Canada.
Down by the lake:
This was an interesting looking jet boat...Hydro Attack.
Shark Attack!
I walked down to the lake area and then continued on to
Queenstown Gardens, a spit with a playground, tennis courts, an ice rink, lawn
bowling, gardens of course and most importantly, the disc golf course. The first few holes of the course were okay,
somewhat out in the open with the odd tree but the course got better and
better. The wind was howling in from the
lake but the forest helped to diminish the effect and if you threw your frisbee
right, you could use it to your advantage.
I enjoyed it so much that I played two rounds.
Awesome tree!
If you look closely you can see the disc golf basket in the middle. You had to thread your way between these big trees, no cheating around to the right.
Leaving Queenstown to head to a freedom camping spot for the
night was a test in patience. It
probably took 5-7 minutes to go about 100 meters from the parking lot. Eventually it sped up but I wondered how
torturous it must be in the summertime when tourist season is in full swing.
Nice spot to camp.
Okay, enough about the camping stuff. The next day I returned to the Queenstown
area in search of one of the paragliding sites called Crown Terrace. I’m not sure why I decided to check this
particular site as the main one is Coronet Peak and I couldn’t find the launch
for Crown Terrace, but there were lovely views looking back towards
Queenstown. I enjoyed watching a few commercial
jets cruising through the valley and descending to the airport.
Queenstown is just to the left of center where the ridge from the left comes down.
The view from the Crown Terrace back towards Queenstown:
So let’s try and find the main site. As I got close I could see some paragliders
and hang gliders in the sky, getting lower and setting up to land…okay, I’m
close. I arrived at Coronet Peak’s
landing zone just after noon and I was immediately impressed with the massive
landing zone of trimmed grass including a big smiley face mowed into the slope
on the side and a nice clubhouse/café. I
met an American hang gliding tandem pilot named Willy who was trying to eat his
lunch but I kept interrupting him with questions about the site and his flying. He was super friendly and introduced me to
Juliette who was a driver for one of the tandem companies. She told me that another van was soon to
arrive and I could see if they had room to take me up to launch and I was in
luck.
The landing zone. The big happy face is the darker bit to the left of the hang glider.
The clubhouse:
Coronet Peak is a ski hill and the drive up to launch was
paved all the way, how nice. I waited
and watched the tandem paragliders and hang gliders take off and then took to
the air. It’s so great to fly a new
site. The landing is 2-3 kilometers
downrange from the takeoff and there’s the main mountain, a bit of a gap and
then a smaller ridge with rocky cliffs and then a coniferous forest lower
down. Not having a vario, I’m
guesstimating that I flew for 45-50 minutes.
It was a bit of a scratch-fest but really enjoyable (if you’re not
familiar with what scratching is, it means that you are close to the terrain
looking for lift and often just maintaining your altitude, going up a bit, then
down a bit, hoping to finally find that elevator to take you higher).
The launch:
Tandem hang gliders getting set up to fly.
After the flight, I returned to town for another round of
disc golf and then back to the same campsite on the lake and even went for a
chilly dip (primarily for the purpose of getting clean, not swimming). It was a lovely evening hanging out on the
beachside, playing guitar, reading a book and working on my Rubik’s cube which
I’m getting close to being able to solve thanks to YouTube.
The weather was decent the next day so I decided to repeat
yesterday’s activity but starting with frisbee golf then flying. I didn’t play so well on the disc golf course
which I attributed to a sore arm and shoulders from my fourth round in three
days but my flight was better than the first.
Returning to Coronet Peak, I met a pilot named Phil from Invercargill
who offered me a ride. His wife drove
for us and there were two other female pilots, Nina from NZ and Natalie who was
originally from England. We went to a
higher launch than where I was the day before with the tandem crew, that’s when
I learned that there are at least a half dozen different launches on the
mountain, plus you could pretty much take off from anywhere as there weren’t
any trees. I flew for about an hour and
a half and got higher and further along the ridge than the day before. Lots of fun.
The weather forecast showed that it might be a bit dodgy for
the next few days so I decided to leave Queenstown and head towards Wanaka,
another spot with a good paragliding site.
I picked a freedom campsite called Bendigo which was beside Lake
Dunstan. It was an okay spot, right
beside the highway and a bit dusty but it fit the bill for one night.
Okay, this post is long enough…kudos to you if you made it
this far.
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