Rock Peak, Arrowtown
Rock Peak is a short hike on a 4WD track 20 minutes from Arrowtown in the southwestern portion of the Pisa Range, Otago, South Island. The track and surrounding hills are part of the Pisa Conservation Area.
Time
Screenshots of the NZ topographic map are licensed as CC BY 4.0 by Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand (LINZ).
DOC reports that this track is 3 hours round-trip.
AllTrails users reported an average of 2 hours 52 minutes.
My experience was about the same, including breaks.
Route
Round-trip, AllTrails reports an elevation gain of 425 meters and a length of 7.9 kilometers.
Crown Range Summit car park is a medium-sized parking lot off the southern side of Crown Range Road, the high-altitude road connecting Queenstown and Arrowtown in the west, through the Cardrona Valley, with Wānaka in the east.
Most drivers who stop here are just interested in the view. While a few started along the track, no one else hiked to Rock Peak.
The route is almost entirely on a 4WD track. At Rock Peak, to get better views, I left the track and maneuvered along the tussocky slopes.
If I had had more time, I would have hiked further northeast toward Mt Allen. A much longer extension goes over Mt Allen, then Quartz Knoll and Queensberry Hill, to Tuohys Saddle, and then Cardrona village. Wilderness Magazine calls the whole track the Crown Range Ridge Track. This is confusing, because the topomap suggests that this the Pisa Range or Criffel Range, while Crown Range is labeled as being the northern side of the valley.
It was fairly cloudy, but I was able to see most of Crown Peak to the north across the valley. I hiked it from Arrowtown a few days later.
If 1 is an easy track, and 4 is using hands and feet on exposed rocks, I give this track a 1 on the 4WD track and a 2 off the track, right at the peak.
The center is facing southwest, toward Ben Cruachan and Queenstown. Crown Range Road is at right, below Mt Scott and the Crown Range.
Hunting
The entire route is in a hunting area. Hunters are forbidden to “discharge firearms near tracks, huts, campsites, road-ends or any other public place.” I have hiked in more than 30 hunting areas, and only passed hunters twice - this wasn’t one of those hikes.
Here is the DOC topomap with all hunting areas visible.
