You probably have heard about the campaign to create the Great Forest National Park. You may be aware that logging in the Central Highlands, to the east of Melbourne, threatens precious forests and endangered wildlife.
This is a great chance to get into these forests to see for yourself what’s going on.
Sunday December 10.
Continue reading “You’re invited to a Wildlife Tour of the Central Highlands”
The high range of mountains that stretch from the western end of The Bluff to Mt Howitt then north to Mt Cobbler contain some of the best alpine country in Victoria.
Long a popular hiking destination, its always tempting to want to walk from one end to the other. But the logistics of doing a car shuffle are complex – it’s a long drive between the Howqua and Lake Cobbler. There is an obvious circuit you can walk, with Mt Stirling being a good start and end point. But the Howqua and King valleys are deep and the scrub along the Stanley Name Spur can be brutal. While there are many variations that are possible, any way you do it will be a serious undertaking, requiring good stamina and navigation skills, experience in backcountry travel, and at least five or six days.
Now the ‘Buller huts trail’, which links these mountains into a seven day circuit, has been launched.
The Backcountry Film Festival (BCFF) is produced each year as a celebration of the human-powered experience and a gathering place for the backcountry snowsports community. The 2018 Melbourne showing for the Backcountry film festival will be held in March or April 2018.
Most years we also show a short Australian film. These have included:
If you have a film you would like to be included with the BCFF this year, please get in touch.
Continue reading “Have you made an Australian backcountry film?”
Mountain Ash (Eucalyptus regnans) is the ‘signature’ tree of the damp montane forests of south eastern Australia. Generally growing in temperate areas receiving over 1,200 millimetres rainfall a year on deep loam soils, this species is the tallest flowering plant on earth.
They have been heavily logged for well over a century, and massive areas have been burnt in wildfire. Now climate change and extreme fragmentation of habitat is driving Mountain ash forest in south-eastern Australia towards ‘almost certain collapse in the next 50 years’, according to an assessment by researchers from the ANU.
The key message in this research is:
Researchers “modelled 39 different scenarios and found there was a 92 to 99.99% chance of collapse of the mountain ash forest in Victoria’s Central Highlands by 2067”.
It is also important to understand that there is still a “critical window where we can act to prevent the loss of the mountain ash forest ecosystem”.
Continue reading “Mountain Ash forests in VIC face ‘almost certain collapse in the next 50 years’”
As another wave of hot weather beats down on us, of course its time to think about winter. I don’t know about you, but I find that life is crazily busy, so if I don’t lock trips in they don’t happen.
Here are early details on two planned events for winter 2018.
A group of investors are proposing a track to a remote wilderness lake at the base of Federation Peak in Tasmania’s South-West (Check here for our previous report).
They have developed a consortium called the Geeves Effect, and are pushing for a 2.5 km track extension to ‘provide walkers with views of Lake Geeves’. They say that ‘the bushwalk could rival Cradle Mountain and Three Capes Tracks as a tourism magnet’.
Since our last report on this proposal, more information has come to light. This comes from the Tasmanian National Parks Association.
Continue reading “The Geeves Effect – another attack on wilderness”
At present, the Victorian alpine resorts are managed by separate boards (Mt Stirling and Mt Buller are managed by a single board). This structure of governance has been described as “complex and ineffective” and the government has been looking into other alternatives. These are outlined in the report Alpine Resorts Governance Reform.
After a long wait, the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change Lily D’Ambrosio has today announced that the government would implement a new governance model and ‘refresh the three northern Alpine Resort Management Boards’ (Falls Creek, Mt Buller/ Mt Stirling and Mt Hotham).
Continue reading “VIC government announces restructure of alpine resorts”
In a worrying move, the ALP in Tasmania has announced that it will allocate $30 million if they win the next state election towards the cable car which is planned for the Cradle Mountain National Park in Tasmania.
The idea for a cable car was raised in a Master Plan for the Cradle Valley section of the Cradle Mountain Lake St Clair National Park, which was developed by the Cradle Coast Authority.
The cable car would connect the Cradle Mountain visitor centre to Dove Lake. Construction of the cable car would require the Commonwealth Government to chip in another $30 million.
Continue reading “Tasmanian ALP pledges $30 million to Cradle Mountain cable car”
The Bogong to Hotham Rooftop Run is a 64km point to point ultra marathon from Mountain Creek to the summit of Mt Hotham.
It will be held on Sunday, 7 January 2018.
Mountain Journal has often reported on the proposal to build a cable car up kunanyi/ Mt Wellington in Hobart. With the recent passage of legislation which will facilitate the development, the campaign against the cable car is entering an important stage. There will be a public forum this Sunday calling on the government to stop the development.
This Sunday 26 November at 2pm.
Continue reading “Stop the privatisation of kunanyi /Mt Wellington: Community forum”
Mt Toorongo is a magical spot: it is a mountain in the Central Highlands to the east of Melbourne. If you drive to the Baw Baw ski village from Noojee, it is the steep dark mountain that fills the skyline above you as you head through the last of the farming country at Icy Creek.
Not many people go there. It’s a bit off the track, but is accessible quite easily via a number of dirt roads. As I understand the ecology of the mountain, it was burnt twice in close succession (in the 1920s and the infamous 1939 fires). So the eucalypt forest on the summit was replaced by a remarkable ‘cloud forest’ of what are normally understorey species. The summit itself is a long ridge which offers wonderful views of the Baw Baw Plateau, the Latrobe Valley and distant Strzelecki Ranges to the south.
Continue reading “Threatened species protected on Toorongo Plateau”
We all know that climate change poses a grave threat to the amount of snow we will be seeing in Australia in coming years. Historically, average snow depths in the Kosciuszko National Park have shown a downward trend over the last 60 years. Another detail in the story of overall decline in snow pack is the ever later arrival of reliable snow (for instance, how often do you get to ski or ride on ‘Opening’ weekend?).
New research from New Zealand/ Aotearoa collaborates the observation that winter is arriving later and leaving earlier.
Continue reading “New Zealand’s winter is shorter by a month over 100 years”
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