Tassie Trip
Day 16
Cradle Mountain
It poured with rain last night. Real heavy fat rain too. I didn't have much hope for the day when we woke and looked outside to more grey and miserable skies.......but luckily we were totally wrong!!
After breakfast we wanted to get the Disco into the NP as they close the gates on a certain number of cars are in and it's usually by 9am. We got through ok and parked at Ronney Creek. Dan and I to start the Overland track up the the Cradle Mountain Summit and everyone else to explore the shorter surrounding tracks. Skies still overcast with some glimpses of blue...encouraging !
Dan and I signed in at the hikers station and chatted to a NP guide who reckoned that the day would clear and that we 'd be in for a bit of a treat. Well the forecasts as for showers all day so we thought yeah whatever as we headed out. We would make a call at Kitchen Hut just before the summit climb as to wherever we'd continue or not.
We set out and walked though some flat prairie like grasses to start - lots of wombat holes here (more on that later ) and climbed up though some rainforest like canopy and up to Crater Lake. Very peaceful here and the clouds were lifting!!
We climbed up the surrounding steep cliffs of Crater Lake and up to Marion's Lookout for a much needed breather and to marvel at how the days weather had changed. The sun was now out and the full sheer cliffs of Cradle were covered only in whisper thin puffy clouds now. It was time to push on for the summit.
At Crater Lake we caught up with DJ and his girlfriend and we spent most of the day climbing with them.
We pushed on to kitchen hut at the foot of Cradle and that was our morning tea stop. This is an emergency hut and it's literally bolted down into the rock face with 6 thick wire traces to keep it there! The day was now pure sunshine with full visibility of the mountain. We would be doing this today!!
Wow the climb from Kitchen Hut to the summit is some really hard work! There is no defined path - just metal poles drilled into the rock face at random intervals to keep you on the rightish sort of path. You are literally rock climbing - hands and feet the whole way to the summit - no safety gear either. A fall here or a rolled ankle would be disastrous!
It took us an hour of hard climbing to reach the summit and what a view to have much it was. Just after we got up top the mist literally swept back over the summit and the temperature dropped along with the visibility . It oh lasted about 5 mins but showed how quickly conditions change - just like at the snow.
The descent took about an hour as well and it was a different hard slog here lost more pressure on your knees and legs to climb down. We stopped to catch our breath at Kitchen Hut again before deciding to walk the Wombat Pool track and back to Dove lake to see the view we wanted to see yesterday.
All up we did the 14ks in just under 6 hours and we got the picture postcard view from Dove as well! 1 day in 10 remember and as it turns out our cracking Monday in Strachan was a cracking day in Cradle ....so extra lucky!
We decided to have dinner at the bistro of the Cradle Mountain Lodge. The kids loved looking at their resident baby echidna foraging for ants in their front garden and so after dinner we made the quick decision to get back in the card and get up to Dove Lake for a sunset photo. Double wow what a great decision - prefect spot for a group pic. On the way back we stopped at Ronney Creek to look for wombats. It was dusk by now and they were all strain to come out of their burrows. We weren't disappointed as we ended up seeing 26 wombats in their natural surrounds freely doing what they do best - eating and pooing!
We got back to camp in the dark having had a most awesome day.
Tomorrow we pack up and head back to Devenport and back to the boat for the journey home sadly. It's been a great trip!