Queenstown’s Hidden Mountain Route (Almost) No One Knows

Mount Crichton is one of the peaks towering above Lake Wakatipu. It rises more than a vertical kilometre straight out of the lake. Nearly 1900 metres of old gold workings, snowfields, loose scree and razorback ridges. And despite being only 15 minutes from Queenstown, hardly anybody gets up there. From the lake below it looks unreal. But there's a problem with this mountain. There's no obvious way up. The normal route is rough, poorly marked, hard to follow and fades out to nothing. But, hidden in the forest, branching off the old gold miners track, there's an unmarked trail few people know about. And it changes the entire route up the mountain. I went looking for that hidden route, so I jumped on the motorbike and headed off to 12 Mile Creek. Okay, heading on this walk up the different ridge, the ridge that follows 12 Mile Creek up to the top of Mount Crichton. Just getting to the first small obstacle. It looks like this tree that's lying there now has come out of that and wiped out the bridge. Okay, about to turn off the track here. Just up from that washed out bridge. It's marked on the map. You can see a bit of old iron from back in the gold rush days. I think there was actually a little community that lived right here. You can see this was something climbing up the walls of a barn or whatever it was here. You can see the stoneworks of what was a small and remote town. And then heading up through that bush, I don't know where to the ridgeline. And once I punched through the bush, then just following that ridge all the way to the top of Mount Crichton. I've got to find the way through though. Looking back, I should have stayed on the old gold miners trail and searched for unmarked trails branching off. But at this stage, I didn't even know if this route existed. So I just pointed up the mountain and went that way. You can't go wrong if you just go up. Just sort of cycling around the mountain, hoping that I might come across a goat track or something that goes up. There's quite a lot of downed trees to scramble over. I'm just picking my way around them. Okay, where I went off the track before wasn't the best spot. It looks like after cycling around, I'm going to be able to get back above those cliffs. And hopefully up here, I might find this goat track heading up the ridge. Actually, what's this? This is something. This is a track. So it looks like the best place to come in is off down here. That's going to connect up with the official track. So I've made a wrong turn. This cost 30 minutes or something. But I expect this is going to take us all the way to the top. It'll be a lot easier now. I was getting over that bush fetching. The first part was pretty hard. It was really steep and there's all these trees down. But then once I started around the cliff, it opened up. And now it's easy. This is a well-trodden track. It's not official though. So obviously a lot of people do it. But I've been living here for six years and didn't know about it until I saw it on Strava. I first noticed this made from all the GPS tracks that people leave behind from their watches and apps. A few years earlier, I'd already climbed Mount Crichton from the Avalanche Creek side. That was steep, scrubby and a nightmare to get up. But this line looked different. And when I tried looking it up, there was no information about it online. No trip reports, no route descriptions, just an unofficial trail quietly spreading by word of mouth. Just starting to make it above the boxing line. Currently at 800 vertical meters of altitude. Having climbed 500. It's actually quite nice. It's a semi-overcast day, so it's not too hot. Going all good. This is definitely the better route up compared to the other side. First view on the top of Crichton. That's it up there. Just going to follow that ridge along. Go up below this one to save some time. Up and over that peak right there. And then down around the other side up to the top. Just got out of the bush line now. Heading up onto the ridge into this tussock. Got a fantastic view of the lake and the rather nice houses down there. Worth probably more than 10 million each. There's much more of a track than I was expecting and this is definitely the way to go. This is way easier than climbing the other side. Fantastic views out into this mountain over here. Not actually sure what that'll be. We'll have to have a look at the map. Still quite a bit of snow in it. There's a bit of tape here. Wonder if they're planning to make this an official track. They probably should. This would be a great addition to the network. Just passed over this rock face here. Went along the ridge across that rock face and there's just two along the face underneath that ridge so I don't need to climb up there. There's a little bit of a track following the side of this boulder field. So the track's petered out to nothing. Crossing another scree slope. Don't really know where I'm going. Staying low was a mistake here. The boulder field was super rough. All loose rock, scrambling and painfully slow progress. I should have just stayed on the ridge. I found the track again. In fact easier going hopefully. Back into the main ridge line. So I've done the same thing two times in a row now. I went below this ridge to try and save myself altitude. I ended up having to come straight up here and it would be much easier to just follow the ridge line. So that's twice in a row. I know that's the next one. Stopped doing that. Just crossed the 1600 meters of elevation threshold. Getting close to the height of Ben Lomond. Still below it by 100 meters though. The battery on my GoPro died here from the cold but the direct route up the ridge gets pretty gnarly. It's narrow, exposed with some proper scrambling and steep drop-offs. So instead I dropped off onto the western face towards the lake. The terrain changes to steep loose scree slopes that slide under every step. You've got to stay light on your feet and test every hold. Then I had patches of late season snow. Firm enough to kick steps into but with steep run-offs underneath. It gives that real alpine feeling. Like you're suddenly a lot further from Queenstown than you actually are. I traversed under the main ridge line aiming for that saddle area around the 1787 mark. One side dropped sharply away towards 12 Mile Creek far below. The other side is a steep face falling towards the lake. You're constantly scanning for the best line. Sometimes staying high in the scree, other times dropping lower to where it's more stable. After pushing through that traverse I started climbing again. The next section was completely covered in snowfields when I went through. I stopped to strap on my microspikes. The snow was from late spring dumps and relatively soft. I probably could have managed without them but they gave me confidence on the steeper sections. The final push to the summit ridge involved kicking steps up a couple of snow chutes. Nothing too extreme but you're using your hands and feet on the steeper sections. In winter conditions I definitely want to have an ice axe for fall arrest but today the soft snow made it manageable. Then suddenly I popped out into the summit ridge. The view hits you like a truck. You're standing at nearly 1900 meters with Lake Isabel shimmering way down below in the hanging valley. The true summit rock is just a short scramble away. Razorback ridges stretch out in every direction. You can see all the way up Lake Wakatipu towards Kinloch, down towards Queenstown and the whole Remarkables range dominating the skyline at the other end. After spending the whole day fighting through bush, boulder fields, scree and route finding, the top feels strangely quiet. No tracks, no people, just wind, rock and the entire lake spread out below you. It feels wild, remote and yet you know that the centre of town is only a 15 minute drive away from the car park. That's the magic of Mount Brighton. It gives you proper alpine adventure right on Queenstown's doorstep. At the summit I decided to complete the traverse and descend via Avalanche Creek, the same route I climbed up a few years earlier in late autumn instead of late spring. The clear alpine towns I remembered from that trip were now buried beneath the last of the winter snowpack. In one spot I punched straight through with my foot and went for a tumble on the slope. In others I was able to put ski down sections I painfully trudged up on the previous climb. Once past the upper basins I started to leave the high open alpine country behind and saw a huge chamois moving across the slopes below me. The open clean rock and tussock gave way and the descent turned into a grind back through the scrub and spare grass towards the old fence line. Progress was slow, pushing through waist high scrub and climbing in and out of hidden holes and creek gullies. Getting closer to the bottom just crossed over a thousand meters of elevation then and you can see the cars plain as day cruising along the road so just about all over. We've just reached the fence to the farmland. I've obviously missed the main track because I remember when I came up here there was a dock sign where you left the farmland and there was stiles that you climbed over. It's just over there so I've got pretty close. There's no track up there you're just sort of picking way down but it should be easy from here on because there is a somewhat formed trail down to the bottom so it's in the bag now. Once I reached the end of the trail I followed the road a few kilometers up to Bennett's Bluff lookout. There's nowhere good to pull over on that stretch of road so it's the best place to hitch a ride back around to 12 mile creek car park or Queenstown. I did this traverse a few years ago and since then a handful of trip reports have appeared online for the route. The best one by far is from the Cher New Zealand guy so give that a google if you want a full route breakdown. Other than that the algorithm reckons you're probably going to like this video here next. Cheers