Day Two. Waterfall Valley Hut to New Pelion Hut.

By Alan Kimber on 13/11/2010

This is a long day, which could be split at Windermere Hut, close by a beautiful lake of the same name. Quite a few of the days can be shortened if you are happy to spend more time in the park and carry more food. No restrictions are placed on trekkers in respect of which huts they use, other than the weight of your packs! We took about ten hours on this section and that included plenty of ‘brew’ stops and photo opportunities.

As a Temperate Rain Forest the land is clad with a variety of contrasting plants from the towering Eucalypts to the carpeting Cushion Plants. Voyaging over this area is made possible with a variety of foot path constructions, including board-walks (my favourite), moraine materials, split tree trunks, stepping stones or in places nothing at all, where it can become very boggy!

Large areas of Button Grass are present and in these places the nomadic Aborigines would have burned trees and undergrowth to encourage new growth, which in turn presented a diet for foraging animals that the tribes used as a food source. Travelling over the Button Grass moors is made possible these days by well constructed board walks, without which trekking is both difficult and damaging to plants and trekkers. The final couple of hours before the New Pelion Hut is characterised by my least favourite footing of slippery tree roots, boggy holes and lichen-covered rocks.