Category: Overland Track

Hello – welcome to day three of our Overland Track hike!
Today started very soggily with steady rain and packing up wet tents.
The fellow, Greg, in the tent on the platform beside us had a bit of bad luck during the night. A local possum actually ripped its way into his tent, dragged out his pack and helped itself to a day and a half’s worth of food!!
I desperately tried to offload some of ours to him, (thinking to lighten the pack) but he said no matter – his wife reckoned he was getting a pot so the extra rations were meant to do him good!

Today we were leaving the beautiful camping area at Windermere and heading out on the 16.8km stroll over to Pelion.
The rain made everything look so beautiful

Today was Jeff’s most challenging day. He had so far gained little sleep and started off the day – to be totally frank – really crabby!!
Rachel got her gear packed a lot quicker and set out ahead so she could take plenty of shoulder breaks.
‘We’ (ie Jeff) fussed about a lot longer getting everything ready to go.

The clouds just sat on the hills as we walked on by

We crossed numerous streams and creeks today. We were glad of the advice to only carry a litre container. Anything more would have been a waste of energy.

After being out on open heathland, we suddenly found ourselves in more dense forests. The paths became tricky underfoot

Especially in the wet – this kind of path slows you down a bit. Not only do you have to maintain your footing, but getting a little off balance with the heavy pack on your back can make you over correct somewhat. Best to go steady.

After a short forest stint it was a relief to see the more stable boardwalks again

There was a short offshoot track to a lookout – so I thought I would dash across to get you a photo

Sadly the fog arrived exactly when I did. Hope you like the non-view I got for you –

Time to stop playing on cliff edges in the fog and move on. Almost straight into forests again. The pathway got more and more dramatic underfoot!

It was hard work, but so beautiful

Time for a water bottle top-up!

Despite the mud puddles, you are not meant to walk around them to avoid them. The more people walk around the more the path widens and the greater impact humans will have on this beautiful area. Sometimes it was hard to find the best way through.

Sometimes it was hard to determine exactly where the path was.

I think this area is the myrtle-beech rainforest.

Todays walk was estimated between 5-7 hours. We certainly took at least 7 I think! The hardest part is towards the end of the day – there aren’t any signs to tell you where you are or how far you have to go. It’s a little disconcerting not knowing if you have 20 minutes left or 2 hours!

Still – there is enough beautiful scenery to distract you.

Finally (finally!!!) we came to Pelion Hut! I can’t tell you how amazing it was to dump down the packs and get our shoes off!

Jeff and I decided to sleep in the hut that night, but we put the tent up to give it some drying time since it got packed up wet that morning

Pelion Hut was situated in the most glorious spot! The veranda was epic

The view stunning

Plenty of furry visitors

For a change we took advantage of proper seats and cooked and ate inside.

It wasn’t bad sleeping in the hut for a change.

Time to try to get a good sleep ready for another day on the track in the morning!

Cheers!

Despite being pretty tired the night before, none of us slept exceptionally well. I found I woke myself up every time I needed to turn over!
I had left my pack in one of the huts to keep it safe from hungry wildlife, as my pack had most of the food.
It was a horrible shock putting it on my shoulders when I collected it in the morning! Ow!

Time to say goodbye to Waterfall Valley and start the trek towards Windermere. 7.8kms and a lot less climbing.

The day was grey and misty and quite pretty – a change from the hot sun from the day before. Landscapes loomed out of the gloom and the colours seemed more saturated and interesting.

Today was Rachel’s tough day. The extended walk yesterday and the weight of the pack gave her shoulders a really tough time. To the point where I could see them swollen through her t-shirt! Concerned about long term damage, she wasn’t sure if going forward was the right thing to do.

We took plenty of breaks, talked through options and took our time.

Stopping to simply look around our world was wonderful.

We aimed to get to Lake Will (our lunch spot) before making any decisions on what Rachel was going to do. In the meantime, Jeff kept her entertained with stories and I kept taking the photos!

Like the day before, the terrain constantly changed as we traipsed along.

The damp weather brought out the best in the colours of the trees

By the time we reached the junction to take a walk over to Lake Will, Rachel’s spirits had risen considerably – even though the pain hadn’t lessened all that much.
We left Jeff, who made himself a coffee, and our packs to do the short walk to see the lake.

It was so nice to be pack-less! A walk sans 20kgs on your back is rather blissful!

Plenty of hikers were taking the opportunity for a swim! I can only imagine how ‘refreshing’ this must have been!

Short break over, time to get the packs back on and keep heading towards Windermere.

Plenty of fabulous lichen & mosses everywhere

Our little party got strung out for a while – Jeff went on ahead for a while as standing was making his feet hurt. Rachel kept her pace and of course I fell behind with my camera, swooning over the beautiful landscapes before me!

We eventually caught up to Jeff and all got back together again

A glimpse of the track before us

The boardwalks gave way to (slightly unstable) rocky pathways

Often when we stopped for a drink or breather but didn’t actually take the packs off, we would bend over and let our backs take the weight off our shoulders for a minute. It was a good way to get some shoulder-relief.

Windermere Hut and camping platforms were tucked away in a beautiful little area

Rachel chose a nice sheltered platform and shed her bag and took a moment to reflect! (er – maybe she was passed out??)

Our platform was tucked away in a corner, overlooked by a pandani family and their friends

We could have had a platform with Lake Views –

But we figured we would be in our sleeping bags hopefully asleep just as soon as dinner was done. Plus – the wind was getting up and this is the tent next door being flattened by it.

The platforms were really actually a lot better than I thought. They had chains to tie down the tents and the boards provided a good place to sit/lay down or spread things about and not get muddy. (Or, more importantly – leeched)

Lunch first. I got extra points for hauling along fresh tomatoes, mayo & my relish!

Best part of the day was ‘Snicker Ration Time’

This meant we had happy campers!

It’s no different in the wilderness than it is in town. You make dinner and unexpected guests turn up looking for a feed!

Time for bed!

Cheers

The Overland Track was an amazing hike. We did 65km over 6 days, through a variety of landscapes carrying packs close to 20kg each.
There was three in our little party – My husband Jeff (doubling as resident nurse), our friend Rachel and myself.

More than 8000 people from more than 50 countries walk this track each year. It was an added bonus getting to know other hikers from around Australia and the world as we would meet up at huts or pass (or in our case get passed) along the tracks.

The weather on our first day was brilliant! Warm to hot with clear blue skies! We started out at Ronnie Creek and set off up the boardwalk – a nice gentle start.
The weight on our shoulders was a bit of a shock – but with a bit of pack/strap adjusting we got most of the weight to settle on our hips.

I think a lot of people who have done this trek agree that the first days hike into Waterfall Valley is the most challenging of the 6 days. A total of 10.7kms with an especially steep ascent to get to Marion’s Lookout. (1250m)

It was the start of the going up sections I began to struggle. The first half of the first day was my biggest challenge. Apart from not being a speedy ‘going up’ person, I think I had managed to get myself a little over-anxious about getting organised and I was pretty nauseous pretty much until we got to Marion’s Lookout. My Nurse was fairly concerned as its not the kind of exercise you can do for long periods of time if you can’t even keep water in your stomach!!

The views just kept getting better and better, which mostly made up for my ‘slight’ indisposition.

Jeff and Rachel were fantastically patient. We took the last lot of insane stairs/chains up at a pretty slow pace.

 

Time to get the packs off for a break and enjoy the breathtaking views. From here, for myself, the water started staying down and I was feeling 100% better.

Time to set off across the glacial landscape under the looming mass of Cradle Mt itself

One of the great things about this hike is the plentiful beautiful fresh water available. Some people filtered their water, but Jeff and I took ours straight from the icy cold streams at every opportunity.

Jeff took some time to duct-tape up some developing blisters.

Mostly I took last place. Especially after I had been bumped into a few times as I stopped without warning to take photos!

We reached Kitchen Hut and took the packs off for a short break.

A lot of people leave their main packs here and head up Cradle Mt itself. Its a fairly steep and challenging climb and we opted just to keep to the main walk for our first day.

With the beautiful weather I am surprised we didn’t encounter more snakes on our walk. We did see one other large tiger snake a few days into the walk but that was it.

The track surface varied as much as the landscape. There were the easy boardwalks & steps

Rocky pathways

Old boarded walks that were coming apart

And some really challenging ‘choose your own adventure’ paths. Negotiating the rocks and tree roots could be a slow process at times – especially towards the end of the day when you were getting a bit weary!

The landscape kept changing and challenging us in different ways. When you spent time watching your feet you had to remember to stop, look up and around to appreciate where you were.

When you do this for the first time, its difficult to gauge how much further you had to go before finding the huts and camping sites. I think we were on the go for about 8 hours that first day!

Back to boardwalks was a bit of a relief! But the wind up here was pretty fierce and kept pushing us off the paths!

We finally started the descent which we assumed to be down into Waterfall Valley – our first camp.

Down through the pandani lined paths. Pandani is part of the heath family and is one of the tallest heaths in the world. I just think they have great looking hair-dos.

At last a sign and the huts are in sight!

We were greeted by one of the rangers who gave us general information on where to camp and rules about using the huts, water and toilets. (More on that later)
We were pretty keen to set up our tents, get some dinner and pass out for the night!

We made it through day one – Time to crawl into our sleeping bags and get some rest ready for day two!

Cheers!

Hello!! Did you miss me?? 😀

Wow… It’s hard to know where to start describing this 65km hike (40 miles). It was amazing, beautiful, tough, stunning & challenging.
We did 6 days traipsing through an incredibly diverse landscape, with tracks that varied from boardwalks to natural paths, boulder scrambles, tree-root lined & swampy puddles.

We lucked out with the weather! Only one rainy misty day which really was beautiful in itself.

I have so many photos to share! Be afraid!
We got back home last night (Sunday evening) after picking up our car at the end, then diverting back to Cradle Mt to collect the car we dropped ourselves off with. We had the most beautiful shower in the world and slept like the dead!

I did take time to choose 5 images out of over 1000 to quickly share. I have a lot of work ahead of me to sort the rest!
I figured I would give you a day by day post about what happened and a second back up post for the remaining photos from that day for the die hard among you that want to see an excessive amount of images!

But for now… there is a whole garden of tomatoes to pick and laundry to get done!

Cheers!