MJ your photos are spot on!! Hows the walk in there and where do you stay, i'm guessing it's more than a day trip? We are thinking of taking a trip to explore tassie at some stage. We'll take the boat over so we can have the car and drive around... gotta be able to get to Barnbougle Dunes and The Lost Farm while i'm there too :)
I assume you mean Cradle Mountain?
Not much walking required if you don't want to :) There are quite a few places to stay up on the mountain, just do a search in one of the travel sites. We stayed at Lemonthyne Lodge which is about 20km from the park entrance, but there are a lot just near the park.
There is a visitor centre immediately outside the park entrance - from there they run shuttle buses up to the lake with various stops along the way with a range of 1/2 to 1 hour walks. The bus drops you off a few hundred metres from the lake shown in the picture above. This is also the start of the overland track - a 5 day walk through to Lake St Claire if you are feeling energetic ;).
I would say you want to set aside a day on the mountain - a good stop if you are traveling to the West Coast.