Contrary to the forecast we woke to a glorious sunny day and went to see the mist clear across the lake before breakfast. We'd decided to do the Mount Rufus circuit which starts at the visitors centre and meant we didn't have to drive. It's actually the only peak you can do in the area, all the others don't have marked trails and going off trail is very difficult due to the vegetation. This was a bit of a shame as the nearby peak of Mt Olympus had a really long undulating summit ridge that ran parallel to the lake shore. We set off and walked up through forest to a grassy bowl and then continued on up through scrubby forest to reach the ridge, with great views all around. The summit is a further distance of c600m from here and was very windy. On the summit peak at 1416m, the views of the surrounding peaks are excellent, north across the national park and west into the wilderness where we could see the Frenchman's Cap. From the summit we headed north passing sandstone outcrops and down through the trees over numerous man made boardwalks, built to protect the vegetation, to a shallow valley before reaching Shadow Lake. We decided to do a side route up Little Hugel, described as 1 hour return in our guide book (we should have known that wasn't going to be the case given it's 2.6km and about 350m of ascent but we headed off anyway!). The route walks around Shadow Lake and Forgotten Lake before climbing steeply through dense forest on a very poor track to reach open rocky slopes. It's then a scramble up boulders to the summit, great fun but Diane was exhausted by the time we reached the top! After enjoying more extensive views we headed back down. The 'diversion' took c2.5 hours in total. We continued back down the main track and eventually got back to our van 9 hours after starting the walk, which is the most we've done for quite a while. After beer and showers we treated ourselves to pizza, a bottle of Old Peculiar for Simon, and a bottle of wine at the cafe. To Simon's annoyance we got moved from the restaurant to the cafe as we didn't want to order from a la carte menu. A very old fashioned thing to do! Back at the van we had an early night, very tired after a superb day out in the hills.
 |
| Early morning mist clearing over Lake St Clair |
 |
| On route to Mt Rufus |
 |
| Mt Rufus - the summit is actually behind the ridge |
 |
| The summit |
 |
| Stunning views from the summit (you can just make out the Frenchman's Cap in the far distance just slightly left of centre) |
 |
| A windy summit cairn |
 |
| Amazing coloured bark on the snow gum trees (the picture doesn't do it justice) |
 |
| Shadow Lake with Little Hugel in the background |
 |
| Looking back at Mt Rufus |
 |
| The view from Little Hugel |
 |
| Little Hugel summit |
 |
| Enjoying a well deserved beer |
 |
| And a bottle of Old Peculiar (in the cafe!) |
No comments:
Post a Comment