Cradle Mountain is a beautiful reason to visit Tasmania. Fairly remote with great hikes and wildlife, it was definitely a highlight of our trip
Pre-Planning
- Travel Logistics: The closest airport is to fly into Launceston, which sits at the north of Tasmania. From there we rented a standard car and drove west 2 hours to Cradle Mountain. The roads are windy so it’s smart to do this drive during the day
- Accommodation: We chose to stay at the Peppers Cradle Lodge. It’s a nice option with a decent but a little pricey restaurant. There aren’t a ton of lodging and restaurant options. Cradle Mountain is more remote and not like a Banff National Park, which has sizable towns nearby
- Permits: If you want to hike the longer Overland Track, you will need to do a lot more planning before. Otherwise, just make sure you buy a park pass from the visitor center
- Bus System: Cradle Mountain uses a mandatory bus system during peak hours. This means during those hours, you cannot take your car in. If you like to wake up for sunrise and beat the crowds like us, it’s not an issue. Otherwise read the latest on the official website here
- Trip Length: For us two days was perfect. We got in at night, had 2 full days, and then left in the morning. That was enough to do some hiking, visit the Devils @ Cradle, and not feel too rushed
- Weather: More on this in the what to pack section.. but check the weather! I was not prepared for how rainy it was in peak summer
Hiking Options
There are a lot of good hiking options in the area, from easy hikes with no elevation to harder hikes. The good news is most of the good hikes leave from Dove Lake Carpark which makes for easy planning.
Dove Lake Circuit
The Dove Lake Circuit is a mostly flat, mostly platformed, 6.4km hike. It’s a loop hike so you can go either direction – we chose to go clockwise to finish by connecting some other hikes described below. The park is really beautifully maintained so it’s suitable for folks of all hiking ability. They have some type of metal on the ground to help give extra traction during wet/rainy weather
Marion’s Lookout
Marion’s Lookout is a short, steep climb that gives you a beautiful view of Dove Lake and Crater Lake. You can either head there from Dove Lake Carpark, or as mentioned before we took Dove Lake Circuit clockwise and then went up Marion’s lookout from the east. Depending on which route you take, it’s around 2-3km.
It’s a steep, slippery climb with chains (kind of like Angel’s Landing in Zion) but once you reach the top it’s truly gorgeous..
Crater Lake Circuit
From Marion’s Lookout, you can also hook onto Crater Lake Circuit, a 7.5km circuit that goes back to Dove Lake Carpark. This Circuit is fairly straightforward as well and passes by Wombat Pool. We unfortunately didn’t see any wombats while we were there.
We didn’t do the full circuit but took part of it back to Wombat, and returned to Dove Lake Carpark shortly after.
Wildlife
We were lucky to see some amazing wildlife while staying at Peppers Cradle Mountain Lodge. Right near the lodge, we saw some wallabies and wombats! We walked on The Enchanted Walk but unfortunately didn’t see any platypus. It took maybe 2-3 hikes on this trail to see all the wildlife we wanted to see, but the trail is a really relaxing pre-dinner walk so we were really happy to repeat it multiple times.
What to Pack
I was surprised at how chilly it was in February. At night it dropped to around 40 and only peaked to mid-50’s during the day. It also on and off rained. We did get lucky with one sunny afternoon, but otherwise we didn’t get one good sunrise or sunset because of cloud coverage. With that said, packing the right gear is super important:
- Osprey 36L Sirrus Pack and rain cover
- Regular sneakers are fine but Hoka One shoes work too!
- 1.5L of water in my MSR Dromlite 2L
- Icebreaker Merino mid-layer
- The North Face HyVent 2.5L rain jacket