Winter! Best time of the year. A bit of resort is fun. Weekend backcountry trips are great. But winter is not winter without at least one big outing. Here’s my shortlist of the best winter backcountry touring trips in the country.
Continue reading “The Big 3: best winter backcountry trips in Australia”
Through summer and autumn, seven year old Mt Beauty local Mack Hull has been working his way through a series of walks to the top of the 10 highest peaks in the state.
His 10 Peaks Challenge aimed to generate funds for Disabled Wintersport Australia (DWA). DWA assisted thousands of individuals with disabilities to participate in winter sports.
He has now raised more than $1,600!
There is still time to donate to the Challenge: All money raised will go to Disabled Wintersport Australia and can be made to the following Bendigo Bank account.
Mack’s 10 Peaks Challenge
BSB 633000
Acct 160028809
Having finished the Challenge, Mack is now focused on helping out DWA on the snow at Falls Creek this winter.
What a fantastic effort.
There’s a great set of photos of all the peaks on Mack’s ‘Challenge’ facebook page.
The Alps received some fantastic snow falls in the last couple of days, prompting at least two resorts to announce they will open a week early.
Perisher has announced it will open a week early (Saturday June 3). Queen’s Birthday weekend is the traditional start to the season in the resorts.
Mt Buller has also been promoting its new snow making technology. The resort spent $1.6m on its ‘Snowfactory’, which is already making and stockpiling artificial snow, and is now spreading this to create a base for operations.Mt Buller will start operations from friday night (June 2).
Hotham has also invested $4.4 million in snowmaking over the past two summers, with the new system, covering more terrain, ready to go. Most resorts have started making snow on the back of this recent weather system. There is a nice summary of how the resorts fared in terms of snowfall on Mountain Watch.
The question, of course, is: is this the start of the 2017 snow pack, or the last autumn snow fall?
Snow forecaster The Grasshopper suggests that 2017 will be a ‘slightly worse than average season’ but it now looks like we will skiing/ riding opportunities over the Queen’s Birthday weekend, at least in the resorts. And unless there is some kind of rain event disaster in the next couple of weeks, it looks like this is the beginning of the base for the season.
The Melbourne show is on tonight, tuesday May 30.
It’s at Melbourne University. Films start 7.15 sharp, so try to get there by 7pm. You don’t need to pre book, just rock up. The show will finish about 9.30pm.
In recent weeks we have heard the astonishing news that ‘up to half’ of the corals on the Great Barrier Reef may have died in the past two years. This confirms the worst fears of environmentalists and scientists and has led to an outpouring of grief by many people. It seems that, day by day, our world gets poorer as we lose iconic landscapes.
Many people know it: they can see landscapes that are disappearing or changing before their eyes. ‘Climate tourism’ (‘see the glaciers before they melt’) is actually a thing. Yet we continue, as a society, as if everything is normal.
Volunteers from Wildlife of the Central Highlands (WOTCH) have found a koala on one of their wildlife surveys in an area on the slopes of the Baw Baw plateau where that species had not been sighted in almost two decades.
Continue reading “Koala spotted in logging coupe near Baw Baw plateau”
Many backcountry huts in the Australian Alps are either intended only for emergency use or are fairly uninviting places to stay (in contrast with many of the ones in high visitation areas of the Tasmanian high country). But the best ones can be fantastic spots for a winter camp when the conditions outside aren’t great.
The best resource I know for locating huts in the mountains is Backcountry Huts. You can search by area or state and find a huge number of buildings, from the ruinous to the fabulous.
The absolute majority of skiers and boarders enjoy their sport in resorts. Yet the continued interest in ‘side country’ and backcountry skiing and riding continues. While here in Australia, the backcountry (BC) does seem busier, it’s hard to tell if more people who mostly ski or ride in resorts are spending some time in the side country, or whether it’s mostly people who are new to the sport who are venturing into the backcountry. It’s probably a mix of the two.
Either way, it does pose an issue. If people who are not familiar with ‘un managed’ winter environments are getting out of resorts under their own power, are they likely to get themselves into trouble in the backcountry? How can we help people to be ready for the conditions and terrain they might find?
The Examiner newspaper is reporting that the Mersey Forest Road has re-opened. There is a 1.4 km walk to the start of the Walls track, and access is still not available to the end of the valley (ie the track into Chalice Lake, Arm River, Lee’s Paddock.
Continue reading “Mersey Forest Road reopens access to Walls of Jerusalem National Park”
The NSW Splitfest DownUnder will be held on weekend of the 25-27th of August in the NSW main range.
In early May, the Alpine Resorts Co-ordinating Council (*) (ARCC) hosted the ‘Alpine Industry Conference’ in Marysville.
While many participants were understandably focused on the imminent announcement about what will happen to the alpine resort management boards, and the overall theme of the conference was ‘managing a changing landscape’, a key issue was the threat posed by climate change to the very survival of the ski industry.
The NSW Nordic Ski Club is screening the Winter Wildlands Backcountry Film Festival. 12 stunning short films from the backcountry: skiing, snowboarding and mountain cultures from around the world. You can book tickets here. Tickets $15. (free for NSC members).
26 July 2017. 7:30 pm
Mountain Journal 
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