Blanket Bay

The Hotel

Blanket Bay was opened on 1 November 1999 by Tom and Pauline Tusher — Tom Tusher being the former president of Levi Strauss who had retired from San Francisco to New Zealand and built Blanket Bay as a personal lodge project on a 1,400-hectare working-sheep-station property at the head of Lake Wakatipu, 45 kilometres north-west of central Queenstown by the Glenorchy-Queenstown Road. The site is the head of the lake — beyond Matakauri, beyond Glenorchy village — with Mount Earnslaw at 2,830 metres directly across the lake-head valley to the north and the Humboldt Mountains rising directly behind the property to the east. The Hollyford Track and the Routeburn Track both depart from staging points within 25 minutes by car. Peter Jackson filmed parts of The Lord of the Rings (specifically scenes from Lothlórien and the Misty Mountains sequences) on the property and adjacent station land between 1999 and 2003.

The 12 rooms divide between 5 Lodge Rooms in the main building at 35 to 45 square metres, 5 Lodge Suites at 60 to 80 square metres with private decks, and 2 detached chalets at 110 to 130 square metres with private outdoor hot tubs. The main lodge is a stone-and-cedar structure that reads as a contemporary interpretation of the South Island high-country sheep-station architectural vernacular, with vast schist-stone fireplaces (one of which holds 30,000 kilograms of stone), exposed beam ceilings, and floor-to-ceiling windows in every guest space facing Mount Earnslaw. Bathrooms are travertine and schist; bath products are New Zealand-made Linden Leaves.

The dining programme is the principal operational layer. Dinner is served in the main lodge dining room with the Mount Earnslaw view, with a four-course set menu programmed daily — the wine cellar holds 8,000 bottles with extensive Central Otago Pinot Noir verticals from Felton Road, Quartz Reef and Mt Difficulty. Lunch on the lodge terrace through the southern summer; pre-dinner canapés in the great room from 6:30 PM. The Spa runs three treatment rooms; the indoor heated pool; and the outdoor hot tub on the lakefront deck. The lodge runs an active hiking-and-fishing programme: brown-trout and rainbow-trout fly-fishing on the Dart and Rees rivers (both immediately adjacent to the property), helicopter access to Milford Sound and Mount Cook, and guided day-hiking on the Routeburn Track.

The Glenorchy position is the booking trade-off relative to Matakauri's lakeside-but-near-Queenstown register. Blanket Bay is 45 minutes by car from central Queenstown, 60 minutes from Queenstown Airport, and is the most remote of the major Queenstown-region lodges by a clear margin. The lodge runs a complimentary helicopter shuttle programme from Queenstown Airport for the Owner's Cottage and Chalet bookings (subject to weather); otherwise the Glenorchy-Queenstown Road is the standard transfer (a deliberately-rated scenic drive). For travellers who want the most-remote, most-cinematic Queenstown-region lodge with the Lord of the Rings filming-location proposition, Blanket Bay is unambiguous. Matakauri is the lake-and-near-village alternative; Blanket Bay is the head-of-lake-and-mountains alternative.

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