some good conditions from last year. Early July 2013, Mt Loch, VIC
Once the weather starts to cool down in southern Australia, something interesting starts to happen to this website: traffic to the ‘sidecountry’ skiing and boarding guide to Mt Hotham starts to climb, peaking in early June.
Its that time of year where we can almost smell the snow and are locking in trips. While this rain has been good, its still really warm. So, what type of winter do we have coming? After last years boom-and-bust cycle of good snow alternating with warm air and rain, lets hope its more consistent. The media is warning of a strong El Nino event this winter, meaning warm and dry conditions. The much trusted weather guru, The Grasshopper who writes for Mountain Watch recently released their initial forecast for the 2014 season.
Amongst some interesting analysis of what an El Nino event actually means, the bottom line on forecast is:
More likely than not we will have a mediocre to above average season and there will be plenty of opportunity for fresh provided you are ready for it. But even if things tend towards the lower end of the scale, my gut tells me we will be compensated by plenty of cool clear nights with copious amounts of snow making to keep the groomed areas looking tip top.
Huts in the mountains can be a vexed issue. Huts will tend to attract people and so tend to concentrate visitation within a larger area. As one example, most people who climb Mt Bogong tend to then turn towards Cleve Cole hut rather than head across to the Hooker Plateau. This tendency to influence visitation can be both good and bad.
They are part of the cultural history of the high country, and reflect major stages in the post colonisation era: cattle grazing, forestry, hydro, even fire watch towers and, more recently, huts built for recreational purposes. We also have a number of strange and random anomalies, ones that don’t really make sense: Craig’s hut near Mt Stirling as an example, which was built as a set for a film. There are, of course, those whose primary function is safety, such as Seaman’s hut near Mt Kosciusko, and huts that belong to clubs or even schools (Geelong Grammar on Mt Stirling).
I have always tended towards the position that we don’t need more huts in the high country. With incremental pressure as ski resorts increase their footprint and the risk of private developments within Victorian national parks and the precedent of private enterprise in a number of Tasmanian parks, I don’t think we need more infrastructure. There have been some hut removals that make ecological sense (such as Albina Lodge, above the western slopes of the Main Range in the Snowy Mountains). I certainly understand the need for huts in strategic spots for safety. And I do appreciate the history of these places, the incredible work of getting materials into hut sites in the early days and the bush skills of the builders. I love the work of Klaus Hueneke, who has chronicled the heritage of the huts.
the hut at Lake Nameless, Central TAS
With the rise in wildfire over the past decade, we have lost many of the iconic huts. There have been some excellent rebuild efforts, such as Michel’s at Mt Bogong. The Victorian High Country Huts Association was founded after the major bushfires of February 2003, to try and preserve remaining huts. Some huts are looked after by organisations and this can give people a strong connection to ‘their’ hut, and various groups exist to look out for huts in general (partial list below).
For me, it’s a rare thing to find a hut that is more appealing than a tent, but amongst my favourites are Seamen’s and the ‘Schlink Hilton’ in the Snowies, Vallejo Gantner at Macalister Springs, Cleve Cole on Bogong (of course), and the hut at Lake Nameless in Central Tasmania. I love the location of the ridiculously ugly house on Mt Wills.
For hut fans, we have recently been posting photos on Mountain Journal’s facebook page. Please feel free to join in and post your favourite pics.
the hut at Newgate Tarn, TAS
I recently spotted the article below, highlighting the value of the ‘secret’ hut stash around many resorts, the little known hang out spot. I remember a rough hut that lasted several years on the northern slopes of The Bluff in Victoria which was popular with some backcountry skiers and boarders. I went to look for it one spring and it was gone (it had been tarp and pole heavy, more a glorified camp than a hut).
What I loved about this article is that it highlights that for all of us who use huts, there are personal and social memories that build up: of friendship, adventure, good dinners, long and late night conversations with strangers. I held my 30th birthday at Vallejo Gantner hut and have spent the last 4 new years at Bluff Spur hut on Mt Stirling with a big gang of friends. Part of the cultural – as opposed to technical – history is preserved in log books and, increasingly, on line. For instance, check the newsletters from the Mt Bogong Club, who have been looking after the Cleve Cole hut since 1965. In many countries there is the tradition of the hut warden, which can add to the sense of hut culture. I like the short film Winters of my Life, an appreciation of the decades-long service of Howard Weamer, who for the past 35 years has spent his winters as a hutkeeper in Yosemite’s backcountry.
Secret stashes, shacks included, are a part of skiing in the same way that early mornings and long drives are. If you are dedicated you will have yours, you’ll know the good ones, and the people to share them with inbounds and out. People who love the mountains cultivated them, probably long before you got there.
While on a recent walk in Mt Field national park in Tasmania, I was struck by the amount of track work that had been done in the four years since I was last there. Much of this is in the fragile areas from Negate Pass through to K Col.
I was reminded of the fact that track work can be incredibly aesthetic. In Tasmania there have been various stages in creating and stabilising tracks, with less use nowdays of locally cut timber, in favour of treated pine and lots of boardwalks. This is never very nice looking in it’s own right, and often needs helicopter lifts to get to remote areas, and hence has a higher environmental impact than locally cut wood. But the stone work in many places, including Mt Field, is fantastic. Thanks to the Parks Service workers, contractors and volunteers who have put in so much effort for so long to stabilise the track network in the mountains.
Although I have walked in remote areas since I was a teenager, I sometimes found track works an intrusion on my enjoyment of wild landscapes. Of course, I eventually realised that in popular – and especially alpine areas – they are a necessary part of reducing impact, by channeling what otherwise may be a myriad of smaller braided trails into a single pathway.
Then the poet Gary Snyder introduced me to the idea of track construction, of laying stones and other trail stabilisation as meaningful work, a way for us to interact with the wild. His poem Riprap and other works constantly remind me of that. Track building is a subtle, low impact way to engage mindfully with landscape.
Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
placed solid, by hands
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way,
straying planets,
These poems, people,
lost ponies with
Dragging saddles—
and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless
four-dimensional
Game of Go.
ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word
a creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
all change, in thoughts,
As well as things.
As we walked out from a fantastic trip, I was reminded that helping out on working bees to stabilise tracks is a great way of giving back to the places we love. If you live in Tasmania, you may want to get involved with Friends of Mt Field, a volunteer group that does much of the track work there. But where ever you are there will be a group doing this type of vital work. You will find some contacts here.
I recently reviewed the ski film All.I.Can. It’s such a great film, but has an awful take home message when it comes to climate change. So when I spotted this film, I was instantly cheered up.
Momenta is a new documentary starring legendary snowboarder Jeremy Jones, climber Conrad Anker, and other big-mountain athletes. It aims to mobilise people to stop a climate-wrecking proposal to ramp up coal exports from the western USA to China.
No, its not going to have the amazing skiing and mountain images of films like All.I.Can. But it brings some significant voices to the debate that – hopefully – can reach the skiing and boarding community and get them organised against this proposal.
The idea for “Momenta,” one of this year’s must-watch environmental documentaries for people concerned about climate change and the future of snow, was hatched in Boulder’s Flatirons in the fall of 2012. Big-mountain snowboarder Jeremy Jones was visiting town with Chris Steinkamp, executive director of Protect Our Winters (POW), the climate change group Jones founded. The two men decided to take a hike to brainstorm ways that POW could rally opposition against a major climate threat that has received scant attention from the national media—a coal train.
“We don’t have the ability yet to mobilize a grassroots army, so we decided a documentary was the best way to get the word out,” Steinkamp says.
“Momenta” sheds light on a climate-wrecking proposal to ship vast amounts of Rocky Mountain coal to Asia. The film stars Jones, legendary climber Conrad Anker and other big-mountain athletes who speak about the changes they’ve seen in the mountains during their lifetimes—as well as biologists, climate scientists, physicians and activists who detail the detrimental consequences of the plan hatched by energy companies, which will excavate vast coal deposits in Montana’s and Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, transport it by rail to the Pacific Northwest, then ship it across the Pacific.
Critics deride the coal-to-China plan as “Keystone on steroids,” a reference to the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline proposal that would transport tar sand oil from Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf Coast for export. Keystone has been called a climate bomb. Burning the Powder River Basin coal, however, poses an even bigger climate threat. “That coal has to stay in the ground,” environmental author and activist Bill McKibben explains in the film.
Mt Buller is already over developed. Is the road part of a plan to see similar development on Mt Stirling?
In 2008, the Mt Buller and Mt Stirling Alpine Resort Management Board applied for permission to build a road through old growth alpine ash across the north side of Corn Hill from Mt Buller to Mt Stirling.
This was ostensively to provide a route for people to escape the mountain in the case of a fire blocking the main road. However, it would pass through a considerable area of dense forest and then across to Mt Stirling, which then requires a long drive down to the Delatite River, where the existing Buller road emerges from the forest. If there is a major fire burning out of the Delatite Valley across the northern side of Buller it is hard to see how a major evacuation would work above the same area of forest. It would be a huge financial investment for a road that would probably never need to be used. A much cheaper option would be to ensure the community gathering site on the mountain contains a fire refugee able to withstand an intense fire.
So, is there something else going on? The Victorian National Parks Association (VNPA) believes the real intent is to make it easier to build accommodation on Mt Stirling because it would greatly improve vehicle access to the higher sections of the mountain.
The VNPA says it would just require a ‘simple amendment’ to the current planning scheme to allow development.
The road was knocked back several years ago, but now the resort is trying to gain approval again.
There have been various attempts to develop ski resort facilities on Mt Stirling over the years, and this has long been resisted by many in the community. Mt Buller is already heavily developed, and Mt Stirling provides opportunities for cheaper, lower impact winter and summer recreation. It has recently seen the development of major mountain biking trails, and provides access to walkers, skiers, 4 wheel drivers, and horse riders.
“ There’s no place on earth that’s changing faster — and no place where that change matters more — than Greenland. ”
– Bill McKibben
The first-ever Greenland expedition relying on crowd source funding aims to answer the ‘burning question’: How much does wildfire and industrial soot darken the ice, increasing melt?
Fossil fuel combustion creates carbon emissions that increase atmospheric thickness, warming climate. The occurrence of wildfire increases with climate warming, increasing soot loading of the atmosphere. Some of this soot is transported through the atmosphere and is deposited on glaciers, lowering their reflectivity, increasing solar energy absorption, increasing melt rates.
While watching wildfires raging across his home state of Colorado, climatologist Jason Box was struck by the question of whether the dark wildfire soot could contribute to the Greenland melting?
Dark Snow is a field and lab project to measure the impact of changing wildfire and industrial soot on snow and ice reflectivity. Soot darkens snow and ice, increasing solar energy absorption, hastening the melt of the “cryosphere”.
They mounted an expedition to Greenland to consider the impacts. A lot of their work is fairly technical. But its an intriguing concept.
Spend Easter in the heart of East Gippsland 18-21 April, 2014
Every Easter for the past 30 years Environment East Gippsland has been showing people the best of East Gippsland’s beautiful and complex forests as part of its Forests Forever ecology camps.
Participants camp on the Brodribb River surrounded by peppermint and manna gums.
Over four days people can spotlight for nightlife, sample hearty home made soups, learn the history of the ongoing fight to save these forests and how they can help.
A range of guided short and longer drives and walks into the forests are led by experts in forest conservation, wildlife and rainforests.
NATURE’S ARK
East Gippsland has some of the most ancient and beautiful forests in the world. The area’s huge trees and rich dense understorey capture and store carbon, create rain and produce clean water in abundance.
Although they have been relentlessly clearfelled for the past 50 years, the remaining stands of unaltered forest are like an ark; habitat for some of Victoria’s most charismatic wildlife, like the Quoll, Yellow-bellied Glider, Long-footed Potoroo and large forest owls and Glossy Black Cockatoo.
CAMP HIGHLIGHTS
Be guided by expert ecologists and botanists into old growth and rainforests, spotlight for nocturnal animals.
Spend four days learning about East Gippsland’s ancient forests and the impacts of logging.
Camp by the beautiful Brodribb River in Goongerah.
This event has been organised by Environment East Gippsland and the Victorian National Parks Association.
All proceeds go to help the campaign to save these forests.
COST
Full 4-day weekend (18-21 April): $60 (concession $40)
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