Cradle Mountain, quite rightly, is
surely the most photographed mountain in the large Cradle
Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park, and archetypal of the park
itself. Back in the mid 1980's, when I was a young and spry 20
something, I hiked up Cradle Mountain one weekday and had the summit,
in spectacular sunshine totally to myself. I can't actually remember
seeing another person all day, but, Cradle Mountain area was not
nearly so developed nor popular back then.
Cradle Mountain
Our walk today took us along the
western shore of Lake Dove, through the Ballroom Forest (a section of
Myrtle and King Billy Pine rainforest), then up steeply past Lake
Wilks to meet the Face Track which traverses along the north side of
Weindorfers Tower. In glorious sunshine on a very good, mostly dry
track, it could not have been much different to yesterdays rather
tenebrous walk through muddy button grass plains and leech infested
heathlands.
Cold front on the horizon
As we approached the junction with the
track that climbs Cradle Mountain, we could see a line of people
slowly staggering upward. A sign at the junction said the round trip
to the summit and back would take 2.5 hours. Doug, however, was
having a light gravity day and flew up in 40 minutes while I gasped
along behind. Together, we passed every other person going up the
track.
Barn Bluff
The first half of the walk lures in the
unwary as it is a good track with rock steps, but the last half is a
scramble up large boulders. At the top, the view, of course, is
glorious. Particularly on such a wonderful day. Many peaks are
visible but Frenchmans Cap was hidden in cloud from the next
approaching cold front.
After lingering for an hour on top, we
rambled down, overtaking all the people going down, and took the
Overland Track along the open Cradle Plateau to Marions Lookout.
This is a popular location and half a dozen people were milling
about. I had never seen Crater Lake so we followed the steep track
down to the shore-line, past an old boat house, down some more past
Cradle Falls and eventually back onto the Overland Track to emerge on
boardwalk for the last section, which, for some reason we decided to
run, back to Ronny Creek shuttle bus stop.
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