how not to go hiking!

Posted on January 12, 2014 Updated on January 13, 2014

We flew back home to Sydney two days ago! Our biggest adventure and highlight in Tasmania would be our hike in Cradle Mountain National Park. At the time, it felt like a misadventure though! So let’s set the scene a little: There were 12 of us ranging from 20 months through to 64 years old. And we went to see Cradle Mountain. One cannot come to Tasmania and NOT see Cradle Mountain. The original plan was to walk Dove Lake Circuit because it was flat and therefore would be manageable with kids, a pram and a wheelie esky (a.k.a cooler bag).

In the group we had: – a 64 year old with gout in his left foot – a 30-something male who had pulled a hamstring during a spontaneous beach race on our first day in Tasmania – a 7 year old who had only just recovered from a 24 hour tummy bug the day before – a 20 month old asleep in a pram What was meant to be an easy walk turned into something extremely ambitious! Instead of walking the Dove Lake circuit which was a 2 hours walk around the lake (we all deemed it would take “too long”). We decided that we would walk the Lake Lilla Track to get to Ronny Creek so we could jump on the shuttle bus back to the Visitor Centre. How hard could it be, right? The map showed that it was mostly boardwalk so off we trot. Lake Lilla Track turned out NOT FLAT nor EASY nor QUICK especially if you were hiking with the four candidates listed above. We hadn’t prepared for this walk and this is when things started to get interesting!

Up and down the rocky pathway through the wilderness we walked with an infant asleep in the pram. Two of the men in our entourage carried the pram so Little Miss could continue to sleep, in hope that we would reach boardwalk soon. The path was narrow, and there were loose wet rocks as we hiked in single file. On and on we went, stopping occasionally to let passer-bys overtake us. We are sure they all thought we were mad! There were moments where we stopped to discuss whether to continue or to turn back as boardwalk was simply not in sight.

And always timely, we would see other hikers coming in the direction we were headed… Let’s ask them! So we did and the responses were similar: “You guys should turn back especially with the pram!” “The boardwalk is only at the very start of the hike, the rest will be rocks and water.” “There is a lot more rocks before you get to boardwalk.” “It’s pretty rough up ahead for you guys.” But did we heed their advice? Hmm… no! We pushed on because we had come so far already! There were times when we felt prematurely excited because there was boardwalk. We would celebrate and cheer, only to find that the boardwalk lasted 50 metres and we were back to gravel, uneven paths again! Were we EVER going to find civilisation?

Finally 2 and a half hours later, we arrived at boardwalk! Normally, it probably wouldn’t take hikers that long but with the entourage we had and our unpreparedness, it DID take us that long. Our reward for finishing was not only boardwalk but seeing wombats at the finish line! We had one wombat climb onto the boardwalk and walk right across our path.  We also saw a baby wombat and its mum.

Regardless of our reward at the end – let us finish by clearly stating: THIS IS NOT HOW TO HIKE! It is so crucial to be prepared, to plan your hike to know where you are going and to notify a responsible person that you are hiking in case you don’t return. It was only after we arrived back at our motel, that we realised that we hadn’t done ANY of those things. We had one 600mL bottle of water each (if that) – we were not dressed for abrupt change in weather. We didn’t really know where we were going. We hadn’t told anyone what we were doing. We had changed our original walk plans and turned it into a hike. What was meant to be only an hour or two at Cradle Mountain National Park became a 3 hour visit. We can laugh about it now, safe and sunburnt but wouldn’t have been laughing if something dire had happened out there. Call us crazy or foolish, we learnt our lesson, we won’t be going unprepared again for bush walks or hikes!