Australia: Cradle Mountain- Tasmania

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Since we spent the night before in Devenport Lynne had to drive us for an hour and a half to get to Cradle Mountain. The one advantage was that an ecidna walked across the road in front of us. Lynne stopped the car in the middle of the road to ensure that it didn't get run over. I would have pulled over myself but it let me get a picture and it was the first one I had seen.

By the time we left the Dove lake car park it was 11:20 which was a lot later than we had planned to start. It was a beautiful day however and I was happy to do a bit of jogging along the easy sections of path, after I had taken loads of pictures of course. The view across Dove lake to Cradle mountain is great especially with the clear blue skies and still water we had.

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We headed along the west shore of the lake, past the boat hut and straight up the steep track to Marion's lookout. The lakeside track is almost completely smooth but this section of track was nice and rough with some sections of scrambling possible if you skirted the track. The views from the top were great and we could see a field of snow leading of towards Cradle mountain. It was an easy if snowy and occasionally boggy route to the Kitchen hut.

From the hut we left the overland track and started to head up the mountain. The first sections are walking but this is gradually replaced by easy boulder scrambling and sloping snow fields. As we approached the ridge the scrambling became more demanding, but still easy, and the snow lessened. On reaching the ridge we passed over onto the South side of the mountain and found ourselves traversing and then climbing deep, steep, snow slopes. This section was a bit more exposed and I would have appreciated my ice axe and crampons but had to make do with a pole.

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It didn't take long to reach the summit plateau but even here the going was awkward at times. I disappeared up to my waste in snow just 2m from the summit. It was a fantastic, fun route and possibly as challenging as I would want to attempt without any real winter gear with me. The views from the top were also absolutely superb.

I wanted to take a different route back so we went East along the Face track which proved to be rough, boggy, overgrown and badly obscured by snow. We had to cross one snow slope that I am sure will avalanche in the near future. The track that led down to Dove lake was probably an improvement on the face track especially the section of bare rock. Once down at Dove lake it was a very easy walk back to the car around the lake.