Hansons Peak & Front Face

Hansons peak rises to 1185m and stands over Dove Lake

Setting off around Dove Lake

we stopped on Glacial Rock, to look across to Crater Peak

and travelled along Lake Rodway Track

before there was quite a climb up the hill

to reach the summit

From here, you could see Hansons Lake

and hiding around the peak are the Twisted Lakes

Continuing on, the path led us passed an emergency hut

towards Weindorfers Tower at, which is the far left of Cradle Mountain

This was the beginning of the Face Track, which runs immediately below Cradle Mountain

The Mountain ridge is made up of Jurassic dolerite about 175 million years old. This once-molton rock was intruded close to the contact between a soft upper layer of Carboniferous and Permian sedimentary rocks and a harder base layer of Proterozoic rocks.
Since that intrusion, the softer top layers have eroded significantly, but the tougher dolerite has resisted and stands atop the landscape .

Although tough, dolerite tends to fracture along lines of weakness formed during cooling. from its molton state. You may see such lines showing up as polygonal columns in the cliffs.

The path leads up through a section of this rock

During glacial periods, Cradle Mountain is thought to have been a nunatak, a mountain above the upper limit if the ice, but surrounded by it. Ice bulldozed and scraped the steep side slopes we see now, but left Cradle Mountain standing above most of the action.
The steep terrain and the weakened joints in the columnar rock make the mountain prone to weathering. Rock falls, including one that crashed across the Face Track in early 2007, are part of on-going geological processes.
In places, you can clearly see in the layers of the rock, how this movement has affected it

The path continued up a very interesting steep section of tree roots

where we stopped to look back over to Hansons Peak and where we had just walked

The hard work was worth it for the spectacular views, back down to Dove Lake where we started, and the ridge we had walked up

After this we began to ascend down the Overland Track,

with some interesting plants - this moss was on very firm ground

and Mr Spider didn't seem to concerned by our presence

as we stopped to admire the views over Lake Wilks

stopping to have lunch over-looking Kathleen's Pool

Before continuing past Lake Lilla


and on to Wombat PooL

We didn't find any wombats here, but we did spot this Echidna