Treading the boards

(Part 6, 11 Photos, click to enlarge) – Last in the series from Cradle Mountain, we hike about 6km from the Ranger’s Station to Ronny Creek. With the sun at our backs and a light breeze, the day could not be more perfect.

This entire section of track is duck-boarded, personally not my favourite type of “bush” walking, though with the large number of visitors to the area it is necessary to protect this unique and fragile environment. The scenery certainly made up for the urban like foot-path and I enjoyed this stroll more than the popular and more crowded Dove Lake circuit.

Much of the “track” passes through open areas of button-grass providing plenty of beautiful views as it meanders beside the Dove River.

As we climbed Snake Hill, Cradle Mountain came into view.

Another peek of the peak as the path twists it’s way through a stand of dead trees.

A still tarn beside the river provided a place of quiet reflection.

While most images I edit from the Olympus EM1 II are done from the jpeg file, the following two were edited from the RAW files due to the extreme contrast. I was able to pull up quite a lot of detail from the shadows and recover some blown out highlights in the tree branches. I did push the first one a fair bit and added some “clarity” giving it a HDR look, but I liked the way it brought out the texture in the twisty knarled branches.

After crossing a bridge and rounding a bend, a stunning view of the Cradle opened up before us not far from Ronny Creek. I couldn’t help but give at least one image the mono treatment.

But the colours really do add to the story.

At Ronny Creek where the Overland Track starts, we were greeted by a Currawong as we waited briefly for the shuttle bus back to the Visitors Centre.

Thanks for joining us on our “Long weekend” at Cradle Mountain, we had a ball and hope you did too!

So what’s next? It’s different, its dark, it’s red, it’s winter. Hobart celebrates the the solstice in style! Don’t miss Dark MoFo – follow 😉