Note
It rained all night after we got to Cradle Valley and was still raining when we caught the shuttle bus to Ronny Creek, and this was the pattern for the next 24 hours. The fog was down to our eyebrows, literally. Walked up past Crater Falls and Crater Lake (beautiful deciduous beech turning yellow) then down past Wombat Pool and Lake Lilla to Dove Lake. From the lookout above the lake, you couldn't tell that there was a lake down below, and when we were at the bottom Cradle Mtn appeared not to exist, so we walked to the boatshed, shivered some more, and caught the shuttle bus back to our nice warm cabin and log fire. Probably wouldn't have got so cold if i didn't spend so long taking photos; the walk took twice as long as it should.
running 1:30:00 [3] 10.0 km (9:00 / km)
(injured) shoes: Asics Gel 2130
Since my shoes were already wet I thought I'd use them some more, and ran down the road from our cabins to Pencil Pine falls to do a 6.5km loop that the guidebook described as "a good low-altitude walk for when the weather is bad". I was a bit startled by the sign suggesting that this walk would take 3 hours, but the track was good to Knyvet falls, and not bad to the bridge across the creek, but I should possibly have turned back at this point when I saw the sign "track not maintained".
This at 5pm, of course, and I hadn't taken a torch, and there's no light whatsoever in the myrtle forest when you're trying to follow ancient marker posts that have lichen growing over them, and then suddenly you're alongside the gorge with water rushing below (Dove Canyon) and you have to scramble up a rock crevice using hands and feet. Once I got out on to the buttongrass plain the light was better but the track worse, if anything, and I've never been so glad to see a boardwalk as I was when I got back to the main Cradle Valley route.
Must ask Zara if she did this run during the week before Easter - I wouldn't be surprised. If so, I wonder what her leech count was. There were 6 on me, mostly on shoes and O pants. Only one had got on my leg and drawn blood. We salted it liberally and it fell off straight away, but the bite is still itchy.