Cradle Mountain

Cradle Mountain's double peaks, with Dove Lake

Today we took a day hike to Cradle Mountain in Cradle Mountain National Park, the mountain for which the town is named.  We walked around a lake at the base called Dove Lake.  While on the trail, we walked through rainforests, eucalyptus forests, and tundra-like vegetation.   It was incredible to see all the diverse plant life in such a small area.  The mountain itself was quite different from the Appalachian Mountains.  

It was very steep and rocky and had jagged peaks and cliffs, like many other mountains in the region.  Cradle Mountain has two major summits, and in between was a curved valley, the “cradle.”  The mountain was probably formed millions of years ago by volcanic action. The reason the mountain looks so jagged is because of how erosion has occurred.  Rather than having rain slowly smooth out the pointy rock, the seasonal cycles of freezing and heating have caused sharp pieces of the mountain to break off.  Like other mountains in the area, it's made of dolerite, an igneous rock that forms in columns.

Sava and I inspecting different rocks at the base of Cradle Mt.

We also saw many metamorphic rocks, rocks that form from other rocks deep under Earth’s surface.  This would hint that the tectonic plates had pushed those rocks up, but all of Australia is now in the middle of a tectonic plate, the Indo-Australian Plate.  Whatever first pushed up Cradle Mountain happened a long time ago, probably during the Jurassic Period.