Walls Hike (Part Two)

Hello! Well… this amazing photo (haha) is our gourmet dinner – yes, I ditched most normal camping food in favour of cup-a-soups, chocolate, muesli bars and cheese and bikkies (crackers)
Totally enjoyed. Funnily enough the biscuits made it happily through the trek without becoming crumbs.
I kinda wondered if I would have to pour crumbs into my mouth and follow it up with a cheese-chaser…

(Photo of me looking all glamorous from Leonie… you can kinda tell its all a bit cold and damp)

So… we went to bed early, ate and then tucked in to try to get some sleep.
Ahhh, well… gosh. My, that was a looooooong cold night.
Not hypothermically cold (I may have just made up a word) but the cold kept seeping in at different spots all night. I think against all odds we did get in a good block of hours sleep but it was hard to feel rested in the morning.
Oh I did NOT want to get up to go to the loo either…
Of course, I eventually did, got dressed and made a hot tea.

We decided not to do the second night.
But we walked a short way up into the actual Walls area to see what we could see

It was cold enough but the day seemed quite nice

Unfortunately a lot of the track as we went up was becoming ice encrusted, so we just figured that it would be too slow to go any distance which would make the hike back a bit later than what we would be comfortable with

We were unsure of what the conditions would be like that day so erred on the side of caution

Bit disappointed of course. Would be nice to eventually actually SEE the Walls when going up there!!

Love the streams running through the mossy terrain

So… back to camp to finish packing our gear, getting the right clothes on and head on back.

The day was much clearer than the day before

We took our time walking across the boardwalk and taking photos and topping up the water. I just ran the stream water through my sawyer mini to filter it (eyeroll… probably filtering some of the cleanest water on the planet)

There are taps at the campsite but they were all frozen that morning

Pretty odd through the fisheye lens…

More mossy streams

And of course my favourite pincushion plants!

I love them so much, weird little creatures haha

Time to get a wriggle on

And looking back to the campsite area (Well hidden)

I like how this stretch of rock is incorporated into the hiking path

And thanks to Leonie… another Lisa-Action-Shot

I really love the area through here, paths, tarns, ice and plants

Its just so beautiful!

And I know I posted this one earlier, but I think its my fav of the trip so I am putting it up again!

And onward we go!

(After another photo of course)

Back to our icecapades…

Cute little stand of Pencil Pines!

And gosh… is that a bit of blue sky?

Thats a bit exciting!

Here is a blatant cut and paste from Wikipedia about Pencil Pines:

Athrotaxis cupressoides, is also known as pencil pine, despite being a species of the family Cupressaceae, and not a member of the pine family. Found either as an erect shrub or as a tree, this species is endemic to Tasmania Australia. Trees can live for upwards of 1000 years, sustaining a very slow growth rate of approximately 12 mm in diameter per year.

There you go!!

More blue sky

Getting better views this day so we could see the lakes and tarns etc a lot better

And for something different… more icy paths

We were actually starting to warm up a bit much by this point so we stopped and shed some layers. Always nice to put the packs down for a few minutes too

Selfie!

OK… not the best lens for this… waaaaaay in the distance is Cradle Mt and surrounding mountains.. snow capped.
So I made Leonie do some zooming on her phone…

Trekking on

Time for a short stop, a snack and packs down

We started coming across those ice over rock waterfalls….

The ice had retreated a bit on some of them, but they were still a bit hairy going up. I think I went bush for this one while Leonie went straight up!

The above photo shows it a bit better… no wrong steps should be made here!

Once we got down to a certain level, it was much easier going as the ice was gone and it was all downhill.
It still took us 4 hours to return. (Better than 6 I suppose!!!)

I am sure we will plan more hikes, but perhaps sticking to the summer months.
I like the challenge of winter but I’d like to update gear a bit for the cold and ice to make things a little safer and a bit more comfortable at night!

Thanks for soldiering through all the photos!!
Cheers!

(Thanks to Leonie for this photo!)