Visiting Pine Valley Hut and the Labyrinth in Winter

In the Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park, Tasmania, lies a beautiful area known as the Labyrinth. The Labyrinth is a wild alpine plateau of tarns and lakes, nestled between mountain peaks and deep valleys. I visited the Labyrinth via Pine Valley Hut in the depths of winter. Below is my account of the trip.

When my friend asked me to join her for a trip into the alpine wilderness of the Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park in the middle of winter, I was as nervous as I was excited.

I had done plenty of overnight and multi-day walks in Tasmania, but always in the summertime, and I knew the Tasmanian winter could be unpredictable and bitterly cold.

One Tasmanian summer, in the Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park, I had encountered snow on a 29-degree celcius day in January. Another time I had found myself in a freak blizzard in the middle of February. Our trip was planned for July.

My fears were somewhat eased as we set off from Hobart on a clear Friday morning for the two and a half hour drive to Lake St Clair. There had been snow in the area over the days before we arrived, but the forecast was all blue skies for the days ahead. I had also borrowed a near Antarctic standard sleeping bag from a friend who spent a lot of time outdoors. We were blessed with sunshine and feeling positive as we hit the road.

Once we arrived at the Lake St Clair visitor centre, at the southern end of the lake, we made our way to the jetty and waited for our ferry journey to the northern end of the lake on Australia’s highest altitude ferry service.

The ferry departs Lake St Clair Visitor Centre and takes people to and from Narcissus Jetty on the northern end of the lake. On demand, it will also stop at Echo Point, part way up the western side of the lake. The ferry journey takes 15 minutes one way. If you don’t fancy a ferry trip, it’s also possible to walk along the side of Lake St Clair, Australia’s deepest lake, to reach Narcissus Jetty, but it takes a whole day of walking (approx. 6 hours) to get from the lake’s southern to northern end.

Our ferry had been pre-booked, which is essential for winter sailings. In summer, three ferries run per day, but in winter, ferries only run on demand. We had the ferry to ourselves on the way up, which felt like a real treat and a bit like we had a private charter!

The ferry ride itself was a great experience. I had never seen Lake St Clair so sunny and clear as on our journey across the lake. From the ferry, we could see the surrounding mountains including the distinctive point of Mt. Ida.

We arrived at Narcissus Jetty and walked by Narcissus Hut and journeyed on towards Pine Valley. The first section of our walk was a flat section along part of the famous Overland Track and was in fairly open eucalypt forest with areas of button grass. We then met a fork in the path and moved off the Overland Track onto the side-track to Pine Valley Hut. A lot of this track consisted of wooden boardwalk, which made it very easy going underfoot. It was also very flat and provided great views of the surrounding peaks, including Mount Gould and the Partheon. It felt great to be out in the wilderness and exploring somewhere new.

As we got to within around 30 minutes of Pine Valley Hut, the walk started to descend into a mossy rainforest with myrtles trees. Cephissus Creek ran along the sides of the track and the temperature dropped as we were under a canopy of dense trees and no longer in direct sunlight.

We then made it into Pine Valley and to the beautiful and well-maintained Pine Valley Hut. There are multiple camping platforms close to the hut, as well as a long drop toilet and a path that leads to a helipad.

We dropped our bags and set up our sleeping matts on one of the sleeping platforms inside the hut. The hut itself consists of one large room that has a fireplace in the middle, two long tables and two bunk style sleeping platforms that are built into the walls in one end of the room. If you needed to, you could probably sleep twenty people inside the hut, but there were only a couple of other small groups when we stayed.

We then went for a little explore around the area. We walked to the nearby Cephissus Falls, tried to identify the native plants and trees growing in the area (my friend was much better than me) and headed down to the helipad. The clearing surrounding the pad had wonderful views but sat beneath where the sun would reach, meaning the pools of water around the helipad had frozen over in the cold and all the plants and infrastructure was coated in ice crystals. It was absolutely freezing, but very beautiful.

As it neared tea-time, we headed back to the hut to prepare our meal out on the deck. We chose the deck for meal preparation as inside the hut was a little bit busy with the dinner rush, and very smoky with the fire. The fire was doing it’s very best to heat up the hut, and while it was warmer inside the hut than outside, it still was not warm inside at all. I was delighted when my friend told me that as we were here in winter, there wouldn’t be any mosquitos. This was a great perk I hadn’t known about winter bushwalking!

Later that night, we headed back down to the helipad before bedtime to see the stars. It was a perfectly clear night and as we were so far away from any light pollution, the sky looked dazzling. Perhaps even more spectacular was that when we turned our head-torches on to look at the ground around us. The helipad was surrounded by frosted plants and puddles filled with moss and they sparkled and twinkled with thousands of ice crystals. It was like everywhere we looked, in every direction, were twinkling stars, and we were in the middle of it all. It felt like some sort of magical scene you would find in a fairytale romance! If you go to Pine Valley, I definitely recommend checking out the night sky from the helipad.

That night, I got into my sleeping bag with basically all of my hiking clothes on at once for warmth and attempted sleep. Even while wearing my basically everything in my pack, it still took me a long time to get warm enough to fall asleep. In the middle of the night, I woke up intermittently from the cold. My biggest advice for bushwalking in the Tasmanian winter is pack warmly and make sure your sleeping bag limit is at least 10 degrees lower than the temperatures you’re expecting.

The following morning I slowly awoke and thawed my chilly body with a warm cup of tea for a day of bushwalking. I would only be carrying a day pack, as we would be staying at Pine Valley Hut another night. I also brought along hiking poles for the day, which turned out to be a huge benefit as the day continued.

We made our way upwards out of Pine Valley on the path towards the Labyrinth along Lake Elysia track. At first, the hiking was fairly easy going, although uphill. We passed through mossy rainforest and ancient pines and found ourselves climbing higher into the scenery of snowy dolerite peaks. Once we reached a higher altitude, more and more pandani plants popped up along the track and the track got steeper.

As we climbed, the path, which was increasingly rocky and would have been a wet creek in summer, was instead frozen. As we neared the top of the ridge we were climbing, we had to haul ourselves up boulders covered in thick layers of ice, which were very slippery and quite a laugh, albeit tiring. We also had to walk across puddles that were frozen solid. We were slipping and sliding and falling and bruising ourselves everywhere and basically making poor attempts at ice skating in walking boots. It was very slow going! The poles turned out to be a huge help for staying upright, and we ended up using one pole each to steady ourselves.

After some time, we finally reached the plateau, where we could take a breath and also take in the wonderful views of the landscape ahead.

We journeyed on under a pair of wedge tailed eagles that observed us from overhead and headed down into the plateau of the Labyrinth. The view was spectacular and there was no one else in the whole valley. I’m sure this spot is beautiful in summer, especially as it’s known for the reflections in the lakes, but I felt so fortunate that we got to see the surrounding mountains dusted in snow.

We headed into the valley and had a little bit of an explore amongst more frozen pathways and ate some lunch by the side of Cyane Lake. We checked the time and decided that we shouldn’t travel any further into the Labyrinth, even though we were keen to see Lake Elysia, as it was winter and the sun would be set before 5pm.

We got back to the hut and saw that all the other hikers had left and the fire had gone out. We tried to get the fire going to no avail. Finally, some other bushwalkers turned up and had more success than us! We spent another night in the hut and I slept a little better than the night before.

The next morning, we cleaned the hut and left to walk back to Narcissus Jetty. It was frosty and sunny along the trail and we had an easy few hours walk.

At Narcissus Hut, we called the Lake St Clair Visitor Centre to confirm our ferry ride back. We enjoyed another smooth sail across the lake and returned to Hobart after a lovely long weekend away.