Valley of the Trolls – Lake Wilson – Mt Erebus, Mt Aspiring National Park NZ

A visit to the Valley of the Trolls and Lake Wilson had been on my to do list for quite a few years. We finally did it in our last month living in New Zealand, staying a night and climbing to a vantage point high on Mt Erebus on day 2. The area is accessed off the Routeburn Track, which already takes you through some of New Zealand’s best scenery. But this off-track side trip will take the scenery next level.

Before Sophia and I started camping I had considered doing this as a long day-walk. This is possible, but staying a night at Lake Wilson will give you more opportunities to explore the area, including an adventurous side trip up Mt Erebus (1978m) if you like to gain height. Views at dusk and dawn were extra special, so that will be added reward for carrying your tent.

Route notes at the end. For fit and experienced parties I’d say this walk is ‘moderate’ to Lake Wilson, but ‘hard’ to Mt Erebus.

Valley of the Trolls – Lake Wilson – Mt Erebus: The Scenery

Routeburn Track to Harris Saddle

Just a handful of photos here as you can see a bigger selection in my original posts: Routeburn Track to Routeburn Flats, and from the flats to Harris Saddle/ Conical Hill. (Note that you don’t climb Conical Hill on this route, although you could as an additional side trip).

Valley of the Trolls and Lake Wilson

After leaving the Routeburn Track you follow the western edge of Lake Harris (where I saw the ducks in the next photo), and enter the Valley of the Trolls through a section containing large boulders. Presumably this is where the trolls hang out.

I climbed up above our campsite and took a some photos at sundown. Here’s just a couple…

Day 2: Mt Erebus and Walking Out

A video of the 360 degree views from our vantage point…

Here’s a very short video of an enormous worm we encountered on the Routeburn Track:

Route Notes

Valley of the Trolls

If you’re coming from Queenstown / Glenorchy then start at the Routeburn Shelter. It’s pretty fast progress along the well graded Routeburn Track, especially as far as Routeburn Falls. From there it’s a bit more rugged to Harris Saddle. (See my route notes from our walk to Harris Saddle and Conical Hill).

At Harris Saddle, before you get to Harris Shelter, drop down to the lake’s edge on an obvious impact track. Continue along the lake shore past some big boulders at the northern end of the lake. You are now in the Valley of the Trolls, although I’ve never seen it named on any map. Continue over boggy ground up stream, crossing the stream to the true left (left looking downstream) as you approach a waterfall.

Lake Wilson

You have two options for accessing Lake Wilson from here. The shortest is to climb up the gully next to the waterfall (on the true left). This is mostly straightforward in the right conditions, except for one section where you have to climb up a one to two metre rock shelf. In dry weather and with a walking partner to help you out this will be okay. But it might be tricky by yourself with a big pack, or in wet weather, or indeed in winter/ spring with snow and ice about. In fact I’ve read that the whole gully can be covered in snow and ice until early summer, requiring crampons and ice axe to take this route. The second and longer, but apparently easier option, is to continue north-east up the valley, climbing easier slopes to Lake Wilson from there.

The area around the Lake Wilson outlet offers a few flat camping spots. That afternoon I crossed the outlet (you might get wet feet) to walk for a while around the western edge of the lake for very nice views in golden light. You can walk around the whole lake, although that takes a good 2-3 hours I believe. I also climbed 10 minutes above our campsite to take photos at dusk.

Mt Erebus

The ‘easiest’ route to Mt Erebus is to gain the south ridge and follow this to the summit. Nevertheless, nothing about this route was particularly easy, except the first 30 minutes or so. I was happy to successfully navigate through confusingly rocky terrain to the ridge, but made a mistake and climbed up onto the crest of the ridge too early. We reached a very good vantage point doing this, but there was no way forward to the summit from there.

The red line on my route map is quite approximate, especially the dotted section. You’ll need to feel your way through the topography. There are a few cairns higher up as you approach the ridge, but I didn’t see them until on our way back. The photo below is of that section, taken in the evening as I was wandering above our campsite. The red arrow is my memory of the route 2.5 months after doing it – so treat it with caution! You can see the terrain and plan your route quite well as you approach from the left hand side (out of frame). But as you progress past the arrow head you cannot see much of the way forward due to big rocks. Some guess work will be required.

We wanted to return to the Routeburn Shelter that day so Sophia talked me out of backtracking and trying for the summit. But I think the correct route, (that Sophia was originally going to take), was to sidle for longer just to the east of the ridge, and climb to the summit up the south-eastern flanks. You can see in the following photo that this area had snow in February, so you’ll need ice axe and crampons for much of the year. I actually don’t think we would have needed to step onto the snow. The snow drifts we did encounter were absolutely rock hard, so I wouldn’t have wanted to.

Returning to Lake Wilson was still a bit tricky to navigate, and we didn’t fully manage to retrace our steps. If you were carrying all your gear you could continue down the valley without returning to the lake, but we had to pick up our tent.  Getting back down the rock step in the gully was slightly easier than going up: Sophia went down first and I lowered our packs down, then climbed down myself.

Here are some photos from a party that made the summit. It’s hard to tell their route up, but you can see the views north that I didn’t get. We’ve actually been into that area on perhaps our best ever walk (thus far) – a circuit via North Col, Lake Nerine, Park Pass and Sugarloaf Pass – so I wasn’t too fussed about seeing it from this angle. (See that post here).

There are other more technical routes to Mt Erebus from the north and west that might suit those with the right experience, and that could be better with snow cover.

The route to Lake Wilson outlet will take roughly 5-7 hours with full packs, (it was about 2 hours from Harris Saddle I think, taking it easy), and perhaps one hour less on the way back. Allow 4+ hours to climb Mt Erebus, although if you are determined and navigate well you can probably do it faster than that.