Tasmania - March 6

After a MUCH better sleep secondary to our new setup in the campervan we got up to brave the cold. It was awfully hard to get out of the warm sleeping bags. But I had to pee!! The trip to the bathroom required hat and mitts. At this point we had two words to describe Tasmania - cold and wet. I got up about an hour before Paul, so headed to the visitor center, planned our day, and signed us in for the hikes. They have a good system here, where they keep track of hikers as long as you sign in. If you don't sign back out when you return, they go looking for you.

After walking around a bit, I decided it was time to wake sleeping beauty, so started getting my breakfast. It was a pleasant meal, if a bit chilly. Sat on chairs looking out at Lake St Claire and listening to the birds. After breakfast we prepared and then headed out for our hike.

The hike in short was 15k, with the first 5k all uphill through the woods, and the rest gentle, either flat or sloping downhill. Most of it was following tree markers in the woods or scrambling across rivers on logs, but there were a couple of boardwalks that made for nice breaks for the feet. Since it had been raining a lot in the previous days, there were rivulets here and there, which required much jumping between rocks and branches to avoid wet feet. Mucky muck pretty much summed that up.

As we climbed through the rainforest and tea tree swamp at the beginning of the walk, and then continued climbing through sub-alpine forest, I shed 5 of my 6 layers one at a time. At the top, though, I quickly started re-accumulating. About 360 meters above us was Mount Rufus with snow on top, and we were surrounded by what looked like upright driftwood. Pretty cool scenery, actually, but not a whole lot of color. There was very little animal life, though lots of interesting flora. The trees that looked petrified were very cool. There were lots of gum-topped stringy barks called Eucalyptus delegatensis that had peeling bark that left fascinating color patterns. After my childhood exposure to craft shows I had always thought that eucalyptus leaves would be rounder, but they come in all shapes and colours. Most around here seemed to be long and thin. This time of year they are starting to turn red and yellow as they fall, though most are still green. Most interesting were the mushrooms. There were colorful little orange ones, and large red ones. Paul found a white toad stool that looked like something from Super Mario Brothers.

Walking away from the lookout for Mount Rufus, we went through a very cool mossy forest with King Billy Pines and Yellow Gum eucalyptus.

About 5/8 along we came to Shadow Lake, which is supposed to be the point of the walk. It was very clean, with great views of mountains. It was in subalpine forest with snow gums and the lake was fringed with pencil pines. I particularly liked pink and red berries on shrubs everywhere, since they lent a bit of color to the day.

On the rest of the walk we followed river much of the way, or at least the sound of the river. As we descended, it got louder, and from the jumping we had to do over water on the trail, it was clear that the recent rains were being good to the river.

Back at the campground, we tucked into a hot chocolate and then a warm supper. I tried wallaby - not my favorite. After supper we grabbed our books and headed back to the lodge to sit by the wood stove until bed time.