Cradle Mountain

On Saturday the 17^th Feb we left Strahan and headed for Cradle Mountain but felt we would stop on the way. The weather was still pretty lousy so I didn’t think there was much value in getting there that day and trying to do any walks in the afternoon. That turned out to be the case for Kay and Derek who pushed on to the Cradle Mountain campsite and found everything was rained in and you couldn’t see anything for cloud and rain.

We stopped off at Tullah at a good free camp overlooking the lake there.

The next morning though we got up early and went straight to Cradle Mountain. We were able to access our camp site for the night early as the previous people had vacated early. So we were there and set up camp by a little after ten. We then went and got the shuttle bus to Dove Lake. Use of the shuttle buses are free if you have a National Park pass which you need anyway if you are going into the National Park. It is a good system as the buses pull in every 5 minutes or so and it keeps a lot of cars out of the park which used to be a nightmare apparently.

So we did a walk around Dove Lake. From the Dove Lake car park you can see Cradle Mountain. As the weather was still a bit lousy we could not get a good look at the mountain as it was in cloud most of the time. At least it wasn’t raining, much. The weather was on the improve and we had hope for a sunny day for Monday which it looked like being.

Here are some photos from the Dove Lake walk.

We were lucky enough to see an echidna close up and I have a good video of one I put on facebook.

This boatshed appears in many Cradle Mountain photos that you see.

On the way back we checked out the Peppers Cradle Mountain Chalet. It is so nice and cosy with wood fires going everywhere and nice lounges in front of fires. Expensive drinks and meals though so it would have been a case of lashing out but we had something better in store anyway.

That night I was very impressed with the camp kitchen and common room at the campground. Even though we had to pay $47 a night for camping, ie no power or water, we had this great camp kitchen which had two big fireplaces. We were able to charge up devices and I made the most of one power point as I had a power board. I just had to tape the lead down on the ground to make it safe. It is good to come prepared with all the gear in the van.

Monday arrived and Derek and I had decided we were up for the huge walk to the summit of Cradle Mountain via Hansen’s Peak and back via Marion’s Lookout. We were up early to get the first shuttle bus at 8.15am to Dove Lake where the walks start. This was the view of Cradle Mountain from the Dove Lake car park. It was not in sunshine yet like I had hoped but it was early days. In any case I reckon it looked great with that bit of mist/cloud hanging around it.

So we started heading up to Hansen’s Peak which is on the left hand side as you look at Cradle Mountain from the car park which you can see in the previous photos. That was quite a climb as you can see in these next shots. Firstly looking up toward the peak, then looking back to the Dove Lake car park.

This shot looks over to Marion’s Lookout where we will be returning by.

There are a numbers of shacks throughout the park for hikers safety. I guess this was one of them that was just before starting the walk across the face of Cradle Mountain.

Then we went across the face and then started to climb. This was the view of what I thought was the summit. Yeah this will be tiring I thought. But then there was a lot more to come.

As we climbed there were four occasions when we thought we were only a few feet to the top, but when we reached that point the track plateaued or dipped and then climbed much higher, and I mean climbed. At one point it was a full on climb, and the thought crossed our mind is this going to be to hard, but no way, we had come this far. It was not going to beat us now. We were rewarded with these views and a sense of elation.

Time to get some food into us and rest before the descent. It was also time to try and dry out my sweat soaked shirt. Fortunately it was a beautiful day and sitting on top of the mountain was very pleasant in the sunshine and there was little wind which is amazing when you think of how high we were.

Then it was time to start the long descent.

We were finally getting some sun on the mountain.

This was the view from Marion’s Lookout.

We made it down to the carpark and we had the whole area in full sunshine which I had been wanting.

I wasn’t sure what to expect at Cradle Mountain and did not even know you could do a summit walk there. But I thoroughly enjoyed the visit there and will never forget doing the summit of Cradle Mountain with the bro, Derek.