Australia 2024

After a nice, full breakfast at our hotel lodge, we were ready for a full day of hiking. The weather indicated it would stop raining around 9 a.m., so we were hopeful. The plan was to go to the information area at the welcome center of Cradle Mountain to make a final call on the hiking options for the day. Cradle Mountain is one of the premier hiking areas in Tasmania, and there are over 5 different trails, along with being the starting point of a multi day hike called the Overland Track. Cradle mountain visitation area is a central spot where you leave your car and pay for a bus to transport you to the hiking spots. Talking with the ranger, we found out it's going to rain most of the day with a good chance of snow (!!). Also, if there is snow, the ranger told us the buses would stop operating "when the snow starts to stick".
So we selected the lowest altitude hike and possibly the most popular hike around Dove Lake. Talking with the driver, he mentioned that the buses only stopped running if there were 2 inches of snow, and he was confident that the buses would not stop running today. After a 7km ride on the bus, we arrived at the Dove Lake stop that had a nice little building that looked like the earlier visitor center with an enclosed rest area as well as a log book requesting that you to register your hike plan if you're planning any of the >2km hikes. So register we did and after starting our walk, we found the pathways trees buffered us from most of the wind and blowing rain. The longer we walked, we were confident we could complete this short 6km/3.5-mile hike around the lake. As we walked, the hike lived up to its hype as being incredibly beautiful. The trail was partial wood blanks covered with chicken wire, which was very helpful when it started to hail on us. Walking around the lake, we saw multiple waterfalls, a variety of trees and plants, and walked over numerous covered steams and through many that weren't. The weather changed multiple times during our walk from serious snow, torrents of hail and beautiful sunshine. Despite the wet stuff, we were glad we didn't let the weather alter our plans because it was well worth it.Read more