Lake St Clair - Shadow Lake Circuit

When we decided to go to Lake St Clair, we knew that we'd be walking, we intended to do the Shadow Lake Return walk, by heading out directly to Shadow Lake, have lunch and return the same way. 3-4 hours, 13km return. Accidentally, we set off in the wrong direction, so technically away from Shadow Lake, more towards Mount Rufus. As it turned out, this was part of the Shadow Lake Circuit, not the return walk. The Shadow Lake Circuit is one of the 60 Great Short Walks.

Either way, we set off from the visitors centre and the walk begins relatively tamely, wandering through a wide open forest track. The route then becomes a lot narrower and meanders through tight turns but the track is well beaten and is easy to follow. In many places, the track was muddy, very muddy and in some places totally waterlogged. This added to the adventure as there were several places where rocks, logs or branches had been dropped across the track to provide 'stepping stones'.

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(Click the pictures to enlarge)

After about 20 minutes there was an open swamp area that had a sturdy boardwalk as it would have been near impossible to pass without it. The ground was rough, winding and the bush is quite dense. You can't really lose your way for the main part, but where you aren't sure, there are pointer arrows guiding the way. You are generally surrounded by tall gums for the first part of the route but after about an hour or so the trail then begins to rise through the forests and the air becomes much more moist and there are loads of different kinds of fungi and mushrooms. I'm no 'mycologist' (fungus academic) but it was really interesting to see the vast variety up there. At one point, the route crossed a narrow river by taking stepping stones and having a short leap to the far bank. The route in the forested, marshy banks is easy to lose, look around for markers! After about two hours, where we were sure that Shadow Lake must be extremely near, we paused for thought and double checked our route using Google maps. Lo and behold, we are nowhere near our lunch destination, we realise whats happened (us accidentally doing the circuit not the return), and then have lunch sitting on out on the boardwalk. Most of the track is not boarded out but this part drops down across a clearing, through marsh and back up into the forest. If you take this route, pause here, it's a pretty spectacular place.

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(Click the pictures to enlarge)

An hour on and we finally reach Shadow Lake. There didnt seem to be anywhere to sit/rest so we scrambled throug the bush a little bit to sit on a fallen tree near the lake and again take it easy. When we headed off on the return side of the circuit, we actually found several much more appropriate places to stop and sit, so if we were to go again, we'd continue on a little bit as the views from these other spots are just as good and way less fuss as they are almost on the track.

As we were leaving,  we met a lady coming the other way who was woefully ill-prepared as she was planning to do the full circuit in pumps, continuing in the opposite direction to us (another 3+ hours for her). She had no kit, drink, bag or even raincoat. Let's be sensible here, if you're off on this walk, take some kind of provisions, as all signs at the start centre suggest (quite rightly) that the weather can change pretty quickly.

We got back to the centre about and hour and a half to two hours later, finally crossing over a large river, walking along a boardwalk and then a short forest walk back to the visitors centre. In total about 5 hours and 15-16km.

Additional day walk information

60 Great Short Walks