Day 6: Lake Artemis
Still keen to get to Lake Artemis and hopefully up Mt Jupiter we figure today could still be a short rest-day walk. The wet and windy weather mean that Mt Jupiter remains obscured by cloud, but we do get to Lake Artemis and also experience one of the most beautiful sections of Beech Forest we have ever seen.
An easy 6 km return, 250m climb day - or so we thought!
Junction Lake Hut. Plenty of room to hang jackets and boots both inside and out.
Geoff chatting with one of the hikers who camped atop Rogoona the night we went to Lake Myrtle. They plan a dayhike out and return along the Never Never today, while we go to Lake Artemis.
It is a rest day, so a short out and return of about 6 km to Lake Artemis.
We cross the creek, which is a bit of an adventure, just upstream of the hut, and start heading up the hill on the other side. This is wrong and we end up scrub bashing for half an exhausting hour on the steep terrain. Once across the creek we should have followed the creek to directly behind the hut, where a cairned track begins. But enough people had made our mistake that a false track had begun. I give us half an hour to find the track and twenty five minutes in, Geoff does (he’s off the hook … for now !).
The old beech forest is amongst the most lovely we’ve seen anywhere in Tasmania. A complete delight.
Camouflaged cairns!
Dense chest high vegetation and steady climbs means that this is not quite the rest day I’d expected. The rain hasn’t stopped. I’m feeling grumpy and tired.
At Lake Artemis it is almost sleeting, sideways. Even amongst the trees we’re almost blasted off our feet.
We’d originally planned to camp up here – the campsite is at the base of the spit on the left, just out of shot – but the surrounding mountains are obscured in mist. This would be an exceptionally beautiful spot in clear weather. But today there is little point climbing the Mountains of Jupiter and we flee back down.
Beech orange (Cyttaria gunnii) is a parasitic fungus that attacks only native beech.
They were fruiting everywhere in the amazing forest.
The hut looks very inviting so we warm ourselves inside, have a mug of hot tea and Geoff breaks out the extra chocolate he smuggled into his pack!