31.9 km / 19.8 Miles
Day 2 – WOW! What a cold, cold, COLD night!
I felt all night that I was half awake and half asleep – felt like a terrible sleep – but at 7.20 when I ‘woke up’ properly I weirdly felt rested. Lots of tossing and turning last night, but 12 hours of ‘resting’!
In the hut and at the tent platforms everyone is stirring – making their coffees and their oatmeal breakfasts! No one seems in a hurry to leave – maybe because of the uphill hike back up the Lake Rodway trail to rejoin the Overland Track again! And the majority of people had come from the other side of Cradle Mountain via the face track, and they had a more gradual down hill. At least I knew what I was up against! The weather is cold and cloudy but at 9 o clock I head out on the trail – still one of the first ones up and out!
A couple who I talk to at breakfast recognized me from last week hiking down from Mt Farell. The guy was like ‘you’re the girl who was biking around the Island we met you running down Mt Farell. Haha, what a small world! (Later on I end up hiking Barn bluff with them!)
There’s maybe a couple of hikers ahead of me and a couple ready to leave shortly after me. The trail up was surprisingly not so bad! It took only an hour. So less time going up than down! It was a little hard on the knees, but I think I had mentally prepared for it to be so much worse and it was actually okay! Once at the junction, and past the emergency shelter I hit the junction for Barn Bluff! And guess what… Barn Bluff was up in the clouds. But I was gonna climb up her anyway!
Making my way up the Barn Bluff trail, I catch up with another hiker. Who is debating whether to summit or not as the clouds are pretty low. But it looks like they are going to clear so we hang out at the bottom for a bit and wait. The couple from breakfast catch up, and the guy decides he’s going to try get to the top with us. So once there’s a short break in the thick cloud we start ascending! The initial climbs gave us some great views of the Park, in all directions but UP! At this point our expectations were that the top was gonna be cloudy and a white out! An hour powering up the rocks the 3 of us made it to the top, some parts were pretty sketchy – and I was definitely thankful for surprisingly dry the rocks and the ‘trail’ was up there! We grabbed some quick photos at the top – could have been any mountain top covered in clouds with that white background haha! I got a quick photo of the clouds clearing and showing Lake Wills down below! And Windermere way way way into the background. A few specks of snow fell on us at the top, and that was clear sign to start heading down. Down was a lot easier for this mountain goat over here! Within 3 hours I’m back down at the trail head/junction. Ready to put my pack back on and start heading down to Waterfall Valley, and on to Windermere Hut for the night.
There was now 7km to go till Windermere. I was doing okay and had plenty of leg and mind power in me. Half way to Windermere was going to be the Lake Wills junction. A short 2km round trip to the lake, on the other side of Barn Bluff. I was happy to dump my pack, and take my stove and some soup down to the lake to have a late lunch. Gutted to see a clear peak up on Barn Bluff!
After Lake Wills it was an easy but slow slight downhill to Windermere Lake. I was hoping the hut was going to be on the lake but once I hit the lake shore it was another 1km up into the forest to get to the hut! I was pretty late getting to the lake – I was the last on the trail out of the group I started with today. It was almost 6pm, and after a long day I decided I didn’t want to put my tent up and opted for staying in the hut instead tonight. There was only 4 of us total in the hut which was nice. I made dinner, set up my bed and then headed back down to the lake shore to photograph a sunset. The sky was a little pink but nothing too exciting.
Day 2 success! Still alive, happy, feeling good, and not bored of dry food yet. Summit #1 done!
