James Mason's Blog -or- The Journal of Contemporary Lunacy

After spending a night in Queenstown (it rained), I got up early and drove up to Cradle Mountain NP (it rained all the way) and enjoyed some mixed weather (to put it mildly) while walking. The weather ended up forcing a change of plans - I was originally going to do a loop that went near the summit but the weather up high at and beyond Marion's Lookout was just so brutal that I ended up turning back (about 30 mins after the lookout). The change did work out reasonably well as I took the relatively sheltered trail past Crater Lake to Ronny Creek then back to Dove Lake. It was a bit of a shame to have not much of a view at all from Marion's Lookout (it took 10 minutes of waiting for it to clear enough to see anything) and Cradle Mountain itself was invisible until mid-afternoon. Still, a really nice area to do some walking with an amazing variety of plant life and scenery.

After warming up with a walk to the pinnacle at Hobart's Mt Wellington the day prior, I ventured a bit farther into the wilderness and tried the Eliza Plateau portion of the Mt Anne track from Condominium Creek (20km down the unsealed C607, itself 30km along B61 from the nearest town at Maydena). It's almost a constant climb after a brief walk through a marsh. Quite challenging as the track varies, sometimes just following a watercourse that has gouged a path down to the rock. The views over Lake Pedder were wonderful and only get better they higher I climbed, at which point more and more of the surrounding mountains became visible. The weather turned nasty as I headed back down (it seemed to change every 15 minutes anyway - rain, sun, wind, cloud) and it poured a which made it a real slog and obscured a lot of the view, which was a pity. Despite the ending, it was still a worthwhile and enjoya...