Pine Valley Track Day 1 - Narcissus Hut to Pine Valley

Date: 27th December, 2014

Distance: 8.9 km

Time: 3.5 hours
Side trip: The Acropolis (partial), ~4 km, 3 hours

The Acropolis, from the Acropolis Plateau

After pitching our tent in the dying light of a clear, golden afternoon near the shores of Lake St Clair yesterday, we awoke today to a grizzly grey morning to kick off our Pine Valley adventure. We had not even started hiking and already the sky was turning on us - was this a sign of things to come? The weather forecast at the Visitor's Centre seemed to indicate so, with showers predicted for 4 of the 5 upcoming days.

Rain on the way at Lake St Clair

We began our trek by taking what is (apparently) Australia's highest altitude ferry service, the IDACLAIR, across the lake to Narcissus Hut. I had been looking forward to the perspective this ride would offer, but with the poor weather there wasn't much to see. Our driver (apparently an ex-Fitzroy player, as we learned after he made some favourable comments about my Lions beanie) was quite entertaining and told us the lake was recently re-measured to a depth of 194 m at its deepest, the deepest lake in Australia... so deep.

Last time I was in Tassie I gave Emily heaps because she hiked every day in her thermals. This morning both dad and I couldn't bring ourselves to strip off our overnight gear - thermals and jumpers and all that warm stuff - before starting. Maybe it wasn't quite so cold last time, or I might have just gotten weaker in my old age.

Pine Valley Hut, here we come!

From the jetty, we headed north along the Overland Track as it followed and then crossed Narcissus River.

Narcissus River from the Overland Track

Suspension bridge over Narcissus River

The walking was very easy from here, with several small creek crossings and patches of greenery among the towering eucalyptus forests and open buttongrass plains.

We encountered many folk heading south on the final leg of their Overland Track journey. Although it was overcast and spitting this morning, reports from hikers suggested much worse weather had befallen them during the previous week, so we couldn't complain. The steady flow of hikers ended once we hit the Pine Valley Track turnoff, and we almost had the track to ourselves for the next two hours to the hut.

We wound our way through open plains (again clouded out without views) and over several suspension bridges before the final section through some beautiful forest.

Although it had only been 3.5 hours of flat walking, neither of us had done much training and dad had never carried such a heavy pack, so we were fairly exhausted by the time we dropped our packs at Pine Valley Hut. The forest scenery surrounding the hut is very beautiful, and most of the campsites were already taken by the time we arrived. After some searching, we located a (relatively root-free) site across the creek. It was a great spot and I'm glad we had a couple of days to camp here.

Our campsite at Pine Valley.... so beautiful

Dad wonders, "Where are the mountains?" from the helipad near Pine Valley Hut

The weather steadily improved throughout the day so, despite our tiredness, we organised our day packs and set about tackling The Acropolis - by all accounts, one of the most spectacular mountain climbs going around.

1,471 m for those of us born after the 60s

Shortly after leaving the hut, our track passed Cephissus Falls, a series of cascades rolling down Cephissus Creek upstream of the campsite.

Cephissus Falls

For about 20 minutes the path meanders through forest before climbing steeply to the Acropolis Plateau. The track was quite wet in sections, and reports from walkers heading the opposite direction were increasingly more positive about the views from the top as the weather cleared up.

Once at the plateau, we had our first view of the mountains surrounding Pine Valley. What we could see was spectacular.

Best of all - we were the last party up the mountain today, so we had it all to ourselves.

The Acropolis summit lies ahead... why does dad look like he's shivering in all the photos?

We wandered along the track a little bit further, but it was getting fairly late and knowing how difficult the final ascent would be, decided to head back. This was hardly disappointing for us given how awesome the views were from this point anyway. Maybe next time...

Mount Gould, The Minotaur and the Parthenon on the other side of Pine Valley. The rightmost gap (just right of centre)
 is where we would be going tomorrow en route to the Labyrinth

On our way back down to Pine Valley... so much easier on descent

Day 1 of our Pine Valley trek over and already we had experienced greatly varied scenery and weather to match it. After cooking our dinner at the hut, we sat down at the helipad to enjoy a quiet sunset over the mountains high above us, wondering what adventures tomorrow would bring. Well, that's what I was thinking anyway - dad might have been more concerned about whether he would be able to get out of his sleeping bag in the morning...

Day 2 - Labyrinth Lookout