Queenstown Hill is a nice little 500m climb tucked just behind town. It has a Council-maintained trail to the “Basket of Dreams” and is one of the more popular walks given the proximity to town and carpark at the base of the main trailhead off Belfast Terrace (south-west face of hill). There are a myriad of guerilla mountain bike trails scattered within which makes for fun alternative routes.

The actual peak is on private land and sign-posted to stay clear.

There are 4 alternative entrances that I know of:

  • On the western side up from the Matakauri Wetland, weaving through climbers anchors and ropes, is the steepest entrance. Once through the climbing bits you’re onto a network of MTB trails. Plenty of fun to be had here.
  • Tucked between a couple of buildings a couple hundred meters up Gorge Rd is another entrance which gets you straight onto the MTB trails, bypassing the climbing bits.
  • On the southern side off Vancouver Drive is a fire trail which gets you under the powerlines and more MTB trails or the main track beyond.
  • On the eastern side tucked behind the reserve off Highview Terrace is another entrance that leads straight into more MTB trails.

I used to live right under here on the south-east side at the lakefront so it was a regular. I’ve since moved 15k away but I still work in town so usually pop out the office door in the evenings before heading home.

My favourite bits are the rock-climbers route on the western side and the MTB trails on the eastern side.

All my GPX files that touch the hill, including some jaunts that stitched on some other hills to the west.

If you zoom right in you can see those fat lines are made up of a tonne of outings. My python coding picked up 143 jaunts to date.

A bunch of my GPX files overlayed, just coz. Chart shows where I’ve done some up+down-to-the-top sessions, a couple of doubles, a longer one starting on the flats, and the little flat bits around 450m that are the stretches of road when I’ve entered/exited from the east.

Views. Bit moody this day. Basket of Dreams with Ben Lomond (left) and Bowen Peak (right) beyond. Afternoon sun casting a silhouette of mountains on the Remarkables. Having fun in the mud. I spent 6 hours on the hill this day covering 35km and 3,128m. MTB trails. Lots of pine. Wintery night trots. Many locks on the gate off Vancouver Drive.

A million cairns in case you get lost.

#trailrunning #trainingground