This challenging trail offers some of Tasmania’s most spectacular views

“Keep an eye out for wombats. They love to come out for a morning snack,” says the bus driver before the door hisses shut. I’ve been deposited at Ronny Creek car park, an unremarkable gravel patch that surprisingly marks the start of the Overland Track — one of Australia’s premier multi-day hikes. Across the road, a boardwalk winds through wide alpine grasslands that sparkle with dew.

Furtive calls and whistles of waking birds fill the air, which still carries the petrichor scent of yesterday’s rain as I take my first steps on the boardwalk. Three hours from Oatlands, the 623sq-mile Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park is home to glacier-carved lakes and a mossy rainforest. Its crowning glory is Cradle Mountain, a cathedral of dolerite rock whose serrated spires snare passing clouds. Criss-crossing the park is a network of hiking trails. Some culminate at the mountain’s summit, which routinely sees a queue of hikers waiting to climb a vertiginous trail to the peak. Others join the 40-mile Overland Track, which disappears into the mountains.

(Related: Tasmania's wildlife turns bioluminescent after dark—and you can see it on this night safari.)

I’ve come for an eight-mile walk that includes the Face Track, so named because it cuts straight across the face of Cradle Mountain, carrying walkers beneath its vertigo-inducing peaks before finishing at Dove Lake Visitor Centre. Seasoned hikers rank it as one of Australia’s most underappreciated day hikes. From the car park, the trail climbs up past gushing waterfalls where hikers can soak their feet. After four miles, I arrive at Marion’s Lookout — the first of many with views down and across the valley. Far below, kayakers paddle across Dove Lake as walkers pad along the circuit track.

I cross alpine tundra towards the misleadingly named Kitchen Hut — a wooden bothy with a drop toilet but no kitchen. Here, the trail splits, and to the left, quietly disappearing into a conifer forest, is the Face Track. The sound of chatter dissipates, replaced by babbling streams, and I’m feeling a bit smug in my solitude, until the boardwalk disappears among tree roots and rocks. The trail becomes increasingly challenging: more than once, it runs headlong into a sheer rockface, forcing me to pack my camera away for a climb, or to shuffle down a cluster of boulders.

Halfway along the track, with heaving lungs and dirty fingernails, my efforts are rewarded when I emerge from the tree line, onto the top of a cliff that thrusts out into the valley. From below, I would never have guessed how many lakes and pools lie hidden across the mountain’s shoulders. I’m surrounded by beautiful, surreal pockets of reflective sky in all directions, while waterfalls thunder just out of sight. Here at the mountain’s teeth, I’ve discovered a rare view few others will see.