Cradle Mountain Day 2

Tuesday, 12 January 2021

Day 2 was looking beautiful from the moment we got up.  We've done lots of walks in this area recently so we planned to take some new tracks and do a loop from our cabin via Marion's Lookout, past Cradle Mountain, down behind it to Lake Rodway, then home via Dove Lake.  It's a fairly big day (20k) but the kids didn't really bat an eyelid about the distance - I think because they've done a few big days on rogaines fairly recently. And of course any day not slogging through mud and carrying 15kilos is going to seem easy to Jett.

We left at around 8:30 and our first stop was Marion's Lookout, about 1 hour later. The park was still quiet - it felt like we had it pretty much to ourselves for a while.

Barnes Bluff looked pretty nice. 

Heading down to Lake Rodway 

Lake Rodway

It took us about 3 and a half hours to get to down to the lake. Pretty much perfect timing for an early lunch. Scott Kilvert Memorial Hut has recently been upgraded and the site has a brand new fancy toilet, as well as some lovely looking tent platforms. It would be a great place for a 2 night hike - you could climb Barnes Bluff on the middle day - in fact we met a group of people doing exactly that. 

After a break we headed back out via a more gentle route. It was great to see a side of Cradle Mountain we've never seen before:

Along the way I finally got to see Artists Pool which I've only ever seen in arty photos. 

And we went through some beautiful stretches of native myrtle forest as well as big stands of pencil pines.

Back up on the ridge we briefly joined the Face Track before taking a detour down to see Twisted Tarns.  The first 10 minutes were filled with magical vistas - almost like a movie set. The next 20 was a bit of a slog as we descended to another lake before climbing back up to the ridge..

Thankfully (given our tired legs) we had a gentle descent down to Dove Lake, then Jon and I chose to walk the final few kilometres home while the kids chose to take the shuttle bus.

Jon and I took advantage of the extra time and stopped to dip our feet in a creek and test out each of our phone's portrait photo modes.  I think mine did a better job of coping with the bright light..

Re-united with the kids we rested our exhausted bodies before cooking up some dinner then playing board games until bedtime. It was such a fantastic day. 

We happened to be staying in one of the larger cabins at Waldheim. It is divided into two units and each side can sleep 8.  Our side of the entrance looked like this:

While the one next door which was housing two families with small children, looked like this: 

That would have been us not all that many years ago!  Actually it crossed both Jon and my minds quite a few times this weekend that we might not be able to drag the kids back to Cradle again - it's so important to make the most of these trips while we can.