We awoke on day 3 of our Overland Track adventure to slightly better weather, well it wasn't snowing on us anyway, but the conditions were still pretty cold and overcast. We had a fairly long day today, by Overland Track standards anyway, so we were up a little earlier once again, breakfasting while we gazed out at the winter wonderland on the other side of the windows. The walker's huts on The Overland Track are fairly basic affairs but they are very much appreciated in conditions like this, I don't know of a much better feeling than arriving at a lonely hut after a long days walking through the rain and snow, knowing that soon you can relax and will be dry and somewhat warm.
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| The snow was starting to thin out but the track was still pretty wet. |
The Overland Track climbs a little today, slowly gaining height as it makes its way to the wide open expanses of Pine Forest Moor. The ground cover of snow thinning out slowly so that be the time we started to cross the extensive duck boards on Pine Forest Moor it was almost gone, in place of the snow was water and mud though. After checking out the Forth River Lookout we climbed a rough section of track over a small forested knoll, this short section of track over the small hill is possibly the roughest on the whole track in hindsight, but it's over pretty quick. Soon after crossing the small hill on Pine Forest Moor The Overland Track starts a fairly long descent down to Frog Flats.
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If you look really hard you can see Barn Bluff and Cradle Mountain rising up in the distance.
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Frog Flats marks the lowest point on the whole Overland Track, so after having a bit of lunch we had only one way to go and that was up. Luckily, while the track climbed fairly steadily it is never really overly steep, as we got closer to Pelion Plains we once again started walking along long sections of duck boarding which made the now gentle climbing even easier. Arriving at Pelion Hut we found that for the first time on the walk we would be sharing with another walker, although three people in the big hut was hardly an ordeal. When I say big hut I don't mean the Pelion Ponderosa that currently sits on Pelion Plains, the hut back in '86 was a green tin job, but it was still a welcoming spot.
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Grabbing a drink, there is no shortage of drinking water on The Overland Track.
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The Dirt.
We walked 14.2 kilometres today. Like the rest of The Overland Track there is a lot of duck boarding today on todays walk which makes it fairly easy to cover the distance. Somewhat unusually there isn't a lot of easily accessible side trips on this section of the track, apart from the very short walk out to the Forth River Lookout the only other remotely well known side trip is to Mt Pelion West, a very tough route. Pelion Hut has been replaced since we visited in '86 and the new hut is massive and sleeps around 60 people in comfort whereas this older one was a lot more on the smaller side.
Relevant Posts.
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| Inside Pelion Hut, this was the first night that we'd shared a hut with any other walkers. |
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