At the end of February 2024, Col and I had set out to do the Du Cane Range traverse. Unfortunately, weather saw us abandon this trip, which resulted in us returning to Lake St Clair Lodge early, with some time to spare. With a good weather window on Monday the 4th of March, we decided to tick off Mt Rufus.

The Stats

Distance: 23km (for the circuit, from the Lake St Clair Visitor Centre)
Time: 7½ hrs (inc. breaks)
Elevation gain: 683m

Video

Location

The circuit starts and finishes from the Lake St Clair Visitor Centre at Cynthia Bay, although there is also an alternative route to the summit from Rufus Canal Road, called the Gingerbread Track.

The Track

The hike to the summit is usually done as a circuit, which can be done in either direction, however it can also be done as an in-and-out walk, which is slightly shorter. We decided to do the circuit in a clockwise direction.

The circuit track is also shared with the Shadow Lake Circuit hike, which is a shorter circuit that doesn’t include the Rufus summit, but does include the same legs for the start and finish of the circuit. We’d previously done the Shadow Lake Circuit, so were familiar with much of the route.

From the visitor centre, the track starts as a wide flat dirt road. Once the sign for the circuit proper is reached, it becomes a narrower walking track. For the most part the track is clear an obvious, and includes sections of duckboarding. There is only one forested section where the track is less obvious, but new markers have been installed here to clarify the way since we did the Shadow Lake hike.

The track quickly start to head up hill, and we had climbed 340m by the time we reach the turn off point for the shorter Shadow Lake Circuit, about 1½ hours in. From this point, there is a climb to a plateau, before another steeper climb up to the ridge which leads to the summit, with amazing views opening up once you are on the ridge.

From the ridge line, the climb to the summit is open, with very low vegetation, and ultimately the summit beehive cairn is reached. When we arrived the cairn was covered in ice left over from the horrendous weather we had suffered over the previous days while on the Gould Plateau.

After having some lunch on the summit, we continued on the circuit route down. Initially this lead to some fascinating rock formations and a duckboarded valley with some spectacular vegetation, including large stands of Pandani.

However, from here the walk became a bit monotonous. While there were beautiful and changing landscapes, the track itself is uninteresting and long. Especially from Shadow Lake, it seemed like a long slog back to the finish.