Brow Peak, Arrowtown, NZ

Purple shows my ascent on an unofficial impact track. Red shows the official-track portions of ascent and descent.
Screenshots of the NZ topographic map are licensed as CC BY 4.0 by Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand (LINZ).

Brow Peak is a medium-length hike, accessible on foot from Arrowtown, in the Queenstown Lakes region of Otago, South Island.

Walking access to it and to Crown Peak was the main thing I valued about my stay in Arrowtown. But I also appreciated the town’s autumn foliage, surprisingly reminiscent of New England in the United States.

Time

AllTrails users report an average of 6 hours 58 minutes.

This hike took me around 7 hours, including breaks.

Route

Round-trip, AllTrails reports an elevation gain of 1173 meters and a length of 16.3 kilometers.

A large parking lot lies on the northern edge of town, just south of the Arrow River. A small bridge across a tributary of the Arrow River is the trailhead. There are DOC signs distinguishing various tracks.

The QEII Trust maintains a fairly thorough map of tracks in the Arrowtown area. From the bridge over the river, I took track the Big Hill/Sawpit Gully Tracks 3a, 3b, and the lower portion of 3c. From 3c, I diverged left (north) up a spur with an obvious impact track. (This is the magenta stretch drawn on the topomap screenshot.)

Reaching the ridge, I turned left (west) on the Brow Peak Route (track 1b), and took it to Brow Peak. I then returned via track 1b to Big Hill Saddle, from which I descended by tracks 3c, 3b, and 3a.

Navigation was easy everywhere.

Although the spur I ascended was the unofficial part of my hike, and had tricky footing in a few spots, the trickiest footing was on the ridge (track 1b) leading west to Brow Peak. It can be fun; for the same reason, it seems like the likeliest place on the hike to injure an ankle.

The descent from Big Hill Saddle was straightforward. There were some muddy patches where streams (shown on the topomap) cross the track.

The summit of Brow Peak is part of other hikes, too.

Some people go both up and down by Big Hill Saddle.
Some follow the ridge west, past Brow Peak to Coronet Peak, or start at Coronet Peak and do the opposite. Those hikes involve track 1a on the QEII Trust map.
Others reach the summit, and return, by different routes starting in Arrowtown. None of these are pictured in full on that map.

Below my photos, there are links to those hikes, with examples.

If 1 is an easy track, and 4 is using hands and feet on exposed rocks, I give this one a 3 on the ridge and a 2 in most other places.