There is something rather special about snow covered landscapes. Everyone loves them, well, everyone seems to love them in some capacity. Even if they aren’t fans of being cold, or the potential risk of being cold, they still have a love for snowy mountains and frozen lakes. I’m one of those people who love being in the cold, preferably with thermals and an array of warm clothing so I am not actually cold, however it is much easier to get warm in the cold than it is to get cold in the warm. One can only get so naked in the hot weather…
Lake St Clair is at the southern end of the Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park. It is the last stop if you have just completed the Overland Track. The Lake St Clair bit is probably the lesser known part the National Park, with Cradle Mountain taking all the glory, and probably a higher proportion of tourists who flock to see the ‘wilderness’ and the lakes and mountains. Having said that it is still pretty popular and there is a fancy cafe/ restaurant thing there.
Although I have stopped at Lake St Clair a fair few times, it’s usually just been for coffee on the way back from somewhere else and I have never actually ventured onto any of the tracks contained within the invisible boundary of the park. So it was with great enthusiasm we jumped in the car and headed up to walk the tracks as well as get coffee.
Bloody hell, we choose the right day to go that’s for sure. To be fair, it was really Zoe who chose the perfect day, I just said ‘yep, let’s go whenever, you pick the day and I’ll be ready’. Our original plan was to head to Mount Field to do the Tarn shelf in the snow, but for some reason we changed our minds. The bonus with the change of plans was the lack of other people around. Not that I don’t like other people, I really do like people, especially other people on walking tracks who I can stop and talk to, because if you know me, then you know I like a chat with random strangers (much to my children’s embarrassment). I’m not one to moan about the amount of people who are somewhere when I am also there, however, it was also kinda nice being the only ones out there. Or I should say a couple of the only ones out there, there were two other people on the track, the ‘Jeans People’ we nicknamed them. I hope they never got too cold and wet in their jeans…
But the snow… holy crapola, the snow… It was magical, utterly magical. There wasn’t a breeze to be felt, even when the snow fell on us, it wasn’t windy snow, it was just fluttery down snow. Every so often the sun would stick its head out from behind some clouds, and even I didn’t object to that sun. Normally I curse it and want it just to go away, but this wintery sun was tolerable. The sign posted 5 hour walk did take us a few hours longer due to the amount of time we had to stop and just soak in the snow covered flora. I am continually amazed by how tough and awesome our native plant friends are to be able to cope with such a harsh environment. During the summer months they would cop some harsh burning sun, and through winter they have to deal with mounds of snow. But they do it with no complaint.
There is a bit of a loop you can do to get to Shadow Lake. You can go clockwise, starting on the Shadow Lake Track, or anti clockwise and head up the Mount Rufus Track. We went up and back along the Mount Rufus Track, because our slow meandering pace was slow and meandering and we took way to long to get up there.
Starting out near the visitors centre there is some magnificent eucalypt forest to wander through which slowly gets more rainforesty as you go. Wonderful giant deles (Eucalyptus delegetensis, which I think are commonly called mountain ash or something) poke their heads up amongst a nice little rainforest understory of celery top pine (Phyllocladus asplenniifolius), myrtles (Nothofagus cunninghammii), waratah (Telopea truncata) and a lovely lush ferny, sedgy, shrubby layer. The higher we went the thicker the snow covering, which made it hard to botanise, but it was also fun to try and guess who was hiding under the snow.
The buttongrass (Gymnoschoenus sphaerocephalus) under snow was pretty amazing. Usually you are used to these big tussocks waving around in the breeze, bobbing their little heads about, instead they were giant mounds of snow, like little hills you could roll down. Okay, not really, they weren’t big enough to roll down, unless you were a small baby, but that would be a bit negligent to roll your small baby down snow covered buttongrass mounds.
I highly recommend walking in the snow at least once in your life. Safely of course. Wear lots of warm clothing (preferably with waterproof stuff over the top, because snow turns to water fairly quickly). Take a gps or download one for your phone, even marked tracks that people walk all the time can be hard to find when they have a layer of snow on them, especially tracks which weave through low vegetation and don’t have trees lining the edges to keep you contained. Make sure you let people know where you are going and don’t attempt that 6 hour walk in the snow when you have only done a 2 hour walk on a spring day. All pretty common sense, but doesn’t hurt to remind ourselves. Tassie can be weird and change its mind on how much wind, snow or hail it might want to throw at you over the course of a day, so prepare for the worst and you may be pleasantly surprised. And of course the usual stuff, take your rubbish, don’t feed the wildlife or chase them around trying to get a selfie with them, don’t shit on the track and most importantly, don’t dig up plants, pick flowers or cut down trees.
