The Australian Splitboard gathering will be held for the fourth year in the Snowy Mountains next winter.
August 21 – 23, 2016.
Chuck it in your diary. It will start with the usual gathering at the Banjo Patterson Inn in Jindabyne on the friday night. Facebook page available here.
Goongerah Environment Centre (GECO), based in a mountain valley in far east Gippsland, is organising two weeks of ‘citizen science’ and a range of activities intended to protect the native forests of the region.
It runs from Friday, December 4 until Friday, December 18.
Continue reading “Summer of Citizen Science and Forest Defence”
We now have the line up of films for the next Backcountry Film festival. Nine films featuring skiing, boarding and climbing, spread over several continents.
You can find the details here.
The Mountaingrass festival is an institution, having been around for more than a quarter of a century. It is held in Harrietville. The dates for 2015 are November 20 to 22.
The Buffalo Stampede is a ‘SkyRunning’ race event that will be held over three days in April 2016 on a variety of courses near Bright.
SkyRunning events are held around the world. This will be the third time Bright has hosted it. There are a range of options, from kids races, a 12 kilometre event to the top of Mt Porepunkah and Apex Hill, plus a 42 kilometre Marathon and 72 kilometre Ultra Marathon. The Ultra follows a course from Bright to Mt Buffalo and back. There is also the option to join the Grand Slam, three days of running which sees participants cover 142 km and 9,000 metres of ascent.
Anyone who has been to Hobart has probably been up Mt Wellington (kunanyi), the charismatic mountain that sits over the city. The road up the mountain allows you to get from sea level to an alpine environment with incredible views with just a short drive.
While there is an ongoing fight to stop a cable car which has been proposed for the mountain, the mountain top itself is largely undeveloped. Hobart City Council has just started a process to include Pinnacle Rd as a heritage-listed item in the Hobart Interim Planning Scheme 2015.
Mountain Journal has previously reported on the proposal to build a new road from Mt Buller to the Mt Stirling ring road. This has been pitched as being a safety issue, to allow a route for people to escape from Mt Buller in the case of a fire blocking the main road.
But given that this road would also travel through a (longer) section of dense forest, it is quite unlikely that the road would serve this purpose. The money needed to build the road would be better spent on upgrading fire fighting infrastructure around the Buller village.
The issue refuses to go away. Charles Street provides some history behind this proposal and an update on the current state of play.
The Dinner Plain Mile High Trail Run is set in the picturesque alpine village of Dinner Plain, at 1569 m the course takes in a range of run distances from entry level runners to the more experienced trail runner, offering opportunities for mum, dad and the kids to get out and experience this pristine alpine environment.
Paradise Music Festival is a 3 day music, camping and BYO festival held at Lake Mountain Alpine Resort in Victoria in early summer.
The following comes from the organisers:
“Now entering it’s third year, Paradise will again be held at the enigmatic location it has become known for, amidst the Victorian alpine forest, at Lake Mountain Alpine Resort. Close to Marysville, the festival site has overlooking views of the Victorian Alps and Great Dividing Range.
The Cannonball Festival is back for 2015. Hosted at Thredbo ski village, the organisers say it “promises dirt, vert and freewheeling action as some of the world’s best mountain bike riders mix it with rising stars and amateur enthusiasts to take home their share of the massive $45,000 in cash and prizes up for grabs”.
“Thredbo is Australia’s home of Gravity Mountain biking, and the five events across three days showcase the diversity of the terrain on offer in the Snowy Mountains. The line-up of events includes the side by side Sram Dual Compressor, RockShox Pump Track Challenge on Thredbo’s new look pump track, the ODI Whip Wars Big Air, Maxxis Flow Motion Cup and the jewel in the crown, the Toyota Australian Open Downhill”.
Full details can be found here.
Fuel reduction (also called controlled burning) is a key tool used by land managers to reduce the intensity of fires when they do occur. Its a simple theory: do a controlled, ‘cool’ burn through an area to reduce the amount of fuel on the forest floor.
In Victoria, there is an annual target, whereby public authorities need to try and burn 5% of public land each year. This has lead to widespread criticism that Parks are burning areas a long way from ‘assets’ (house, farms, etc). In effect, it seems that the target has become political rather than about reducing fire risk. There is also evidence that some fire regimes being imposed on some landscapes may be causing ecological harm or even potentially increasing fuel loads through changing vegetation structure.
Continue reading “Fuel reduction of limited value in reducing fire risk”
Outdoor company Patagonia is well known as a being conservation leader because of it’s attempts to reduce the environmental impacts of it’s products and its support for grassroots environmental activism around the world.
Amongst their in-house campaigns, they have one called the New Localism. In many ways this program simply encourages people to ‘pay the rent’ to the places that they love to explore, by working to protect them.
They say:
“We are all locals. And we live in a global world. We can no longer pass through or visit remote wild places and trust they will remain that way. Patagonia’s friends have always brought us news of places they loved that are threatened. Patagonia is committed to bringing our resources and connections to bear on these threats to wildness, far and wide. We all have a chance to make a difference. Take a stand”.
As part of the New Localism initiative, the company is hosting a traveling film festival which features a range of films that straddle the divide between adventure and activism.
Different films are being in various locations, starting in Sydney on Wednesday October 23.
The series includes Damnation, which looks at the movements in North America which are seeking to have dams which are no longer needed removed from key river systems, and Jumbo Wild, which chronicles the long campaign to stop a mega development in the Purcell Mountains of British Columbia.
You can find out more about the festival here, and dates and locations of showings here.
[Imagine is from Patagonia, in the Purcell Mountains, BC.]
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