Overland Track - Day 0: Cradle Mountain

Bus to Cradle Mountain arrived nice and early at our accommodation in Launceston. We don't start the trek until tomorrow, but decided head up to Cradle Mountain a day early, so we can head off as early as possible on day 1. We make a breakfast pit stop at a small town and sample a few breakie pies (venison for breakfast anyone?) and we're off again.

We arrive at Cradle Mountain visitor centre right on schedule, the Overland company we've booked through have been really impressive so far.

We drop off our bags at our accommodation and head out with a day pack. The plan is to hike up to Cradle Mountain today, which is normally an optional side trip on day 1, but the weather is looking ordinary for tomorrow, meaning it's unlikely we'll see anything.

We hop on the shuttle bus and get off at to Dove Lake, where we're starting the hike to Cradle Mountain. There's also a bunch of other trails you can do from here. We've been sent very good weather today. We're all completely awed about how beautiful the scenery is. The terrain is nice and easy to begin with but eventually turns a bit more sketchy. We're scrambling up the side of the mountain and there's even a chain link rope to pull yourself up on. This is some kind of warm up for the 7 day trek we've got ahead of us!

We stop about 3/4 of the way up to gobble down our sandwiches and carry on. We get to the bottom of the last ascent to take us to the peak of Cradle Mountain and the clouds have just rolled in. We ask a couple of hikers who gave just come down and the consensus is we likely we won't see anything by the time we've get up there. It's probably another good 1-2 hours, plus there's the couple of hours it will take us to get back to the shuttle. We decide to save our legs for the actual trek and head back down. Cam and Hayden had already headed up the summit, so we'll get the lowdown from them later.

We head back down and get a preview of some of the Overland Track we'll be walking tomorrow. We feel like we've made the right call, day 1 looks challenging! We meet a few walkers who are on day 1 and they're huffing and puffing but look glad to be out there. We can't wait to get out there. The temperature really starts to drop and the winds pick up. It's true what they say about this part of Tassie, the weather is unpredictable and changes on a dime. We make it back to the visitor centre and the boys aren't far behind. They unfortunately don't get to see the views because of the cloud cover.

We're all knackered and head back to our accommodation for a hot shower, meal and early night ready for the adventure ahead!