The high country on a Queenstown quad bike adventure

Every view on a Queenstown quad bike adventure is a view of what ice left behind. Destination Queenstown, the regional tourism body, explains that Lake Whakatipu was formed by a huge glacier pushing through from the north-west as the last ice age ended, 15,000 years ago.¹ Tourism New Zealand says the lake fills a deep valley that ancient glaciers carved into the mountains.⁶

The result is a long, narrow lake bent into the shape of a lightning bolt. It covers 290 square km, runs 84km and is 5km wide at its widest point.² From the top of Queenstown Hill you see only part of it, curling away behind Cecil Peak and towards Kingston, and that is the best way to sense its scale: the water simply keeps going.

The slopes you ride are the sides of that old ice trough. Steep faces drop straight into the water, and the softer, rolling ground around Frankton and the hill is where the ice spread out and left its debris. On mountain quad biking in Queenstown you ride up those slopes on farm tracks and look down on the floor of the old glacier, now filled with the lake.

The first European to see the lake was Nathaniel Chalmers in 1853, according to Destination Queenstown.²⁶ A few years later, in 1857, Alexander Garvie saw a jagged range during a survey and called it the Remarkables.⁷ The name stuck, and the range now looks back at you from across the lake on every clear day.

William Rees, often called the founder of Queenstown, arrived in 1860 and set up a high-country farm close to where the town centre stands today.⁸ Cecil Peak and Walter Peak, the pair of mountains facing the town, both take their names from his son, Cecil Walter.¹⁹ Rees also named the Shotover River after Shotover Park, the English home of his business partner.²⁰

The tallest mountain around the lake is Mount Earnslaw, at 2819 metres.¹⁷ You will not see it from every bend, but on a clear day it marks the far end of the view to the north-west. Rees left a vivid account of the way in: he wrote of speargrass and matagouri so thick that they tore at the party's legs.²⁵ Look at the tussock on the hill and imagine crossing it on foot.

When the gold faded, sheep stayed. The quads on this site ride across Queenstown Hill Station, which is still a working sheep farm.⁵ That puts a quad bike safari in Queenstown in the middle of a long farming tradition: the same slopes, the same fences, and stock that the operator warns may act unpredictably.³⁸

The lake itself was once the road to the stations. The steamship Earnslaw began service in 1912.⁹ It was built to move sheep, cattle and passengers between the high-country stations around the shore.¹⁰ Today it carries visitors across to Walter Peak High Country Farm for farm demonstrations and afternoon tea.³⁹

Life on a station still shows on the ride. You pass woolsheds and stock yards, gates that the guide opens and closes, and sheep scattering ahead of the line. The operator even ends its corporate conservation days with lunch at the station woolshed.⁴⁰ Ride slowly past the animals: it is their home, and you are a passing visitor on their hill.