The Victorian backcountry festival is back for it’s 8th year. And in 2025, has become the Australian BC Fest.
It will be the same format as usual – hosted at Mt Hotham resort, with tours, workshops, parties, speakers program, repair cafe, and more.
The festival is a 100% volunteer run community festival. The organising committee is working hard to deliver another great festival.
Chuck it in your diary: friday – sunday 29 – 31 August.
Facebook page here.
Enjoy. Explore. Protect. Backcountry.
The backcountry film festival is a pre winter institution in Melbourne. We have been screening the festival each year since 2011. This is a first announcement for the 2025 screening and a call for local backcountry films to be included in the festival.
The festival will happen on Sunday May 11, 2025.
Apart from the program of films produced by the Winter Wildlands Alliance, the festival will freature the first Australian screening of Papsura: Peak of Evil.
Continue reading “First Australian screening of Papsura: Peak of Evil”
The Mountain Journal magazine is now in its 5th year of production. We print 1,000 copies and distribute it for free through mountain and valley towns between Melbourne and Canberra during autumn each year. This year we had a guest editor – Anna Langford, who has produced an absolutely gorgeous magazine with the assistance of designer Tess Sellar and beautiful images from a range of people including Matt Tomkins.
The theme delves into what is happening to Winter. As Anna says in her introduction: “Long, deep winters are fast becoming folk tales of the past. But there is still so much to love, and so much we can do to act. To talk about our alpine winters is to lament what we’ve lost, celebrate
what we still have, record it for collective memory, and impel each other to step up and take action“.
Continue reading “Mountain Journal magazine #5 now available”
The backcountry film festival is a pre winter institution in Melbourne. We have been screening the festival each year since 2011. This is a first announcement for the 2025 screening and a call for local backcountry films to be included in the festival.
The festival will happen on Sunday May 11, 2025.
It’s that time of year. We are starting to get the annual magazine started. MJ magazine is an annual magazine that is distributed for free in mountain and valley towns between Melbourne and Canberra. And this year we have a guest editor: Anna Langford.
Continue reading “Mountain Journal magazine #5 – call-out for contributions”
Last winter already seems like a dream. It was so brief (with some moments of absolute powder glory) but gone so soon. Living through the second short season in a row makes us all worry about what’s coming as climate change keeps kicking in (the recently released ‘Victoria’s changing climate report – available here – highlights the fact that snow pack has been in decline in Victoria since the 1950s).
But to be a skier or rider in Australia is to be an eternal optimist. So we plough on, hopeful that next winter will break the current losing trend.
And, when we can’t get to the snow, there is always the Backcountry Film festival!
Continue reading “Do you have a film to include in the 2025 backcountry film festival?”
International Mountain Day is marked each year on December 11. This is one of those globally recognised events that often have an annual theme, and according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN (FAO), this year it is “Mountain solutions for a sustainable future – innovation, adaptation and youth”.
Out in central and northern Victoria, on the traditional lands of the Dja Dja Wurrung people, there are two sets of celebrations that will happen around the global day. The Dja Dja Wurrung are organising an event at Lalgambuk (Mt Franklin) on the 11th, and the folks from the Great Dividing Trail Network (who look after the trail that runs from Ballarat to Bendigo) are hosting a series of walks to different mountains between the 6th and 10th of December.
Continue reading “Celebrating International Mountain Day – in the lowlands”
Each autumn, the Backcountry Film Festival comes to Naarm/ Melbourne. Timed to inspire some pre season stoke, the program is put together by the Winter Wildlands Alliance (WWA) in Idaho and is a one night festival featuring up to 12 short films. Last year there were 2 films with an Australian connection.
As well as the WWA package, we like to screen one or two locally produced backcountry films – and maybe that’s where you come in! In the 2024 season we showed local films 36o South and Spring Shralpinism on Sentinel Ridge.
If you plan to make a short backcountry inspired film after this winter and would like to show it to an enthusiastic audience, then please get in touch. Cam.walker@foe.org.au
The 2025 screening will happen some time in April or May 2025.
I started Mountain Journal back in 2010. Hiding from the mid summer heat, I drew inspiration from Mountain Gazette, a long lived magazine from the USA, and started turning out a few stories under the general themes of ‘news, environment and culture’ from the Australian Alps. Almost a decade later I finally managed to produce a printed magazine, which is now in its 4th year of production.
Somewhere along the way I wrote “people do want to read well crafted content that comes from *somewhere*. Place still matters, and mountains are some of the most compelling environments, drawing us mountain lovers in, helping to form the communities and cultures we develop as we try to make sense of each place.”
Most of what I read is online nowdays. But I do love the experience of print. Finding a sunny spot under a tree and diving into a magazine or book remains a very different experience to sitting on some kind of electronic device. We all know that print is hard – its expensive to produce and distribute. But it has an enduring charm and many people still love the substance and feel of paper-based reading, be it magazine or book.
The first Victorian backcountry festival was held at Falls Creek in 2018. It is now a significant annual community event, based at Mt Hotham – and touring the surrounding mountains – and draws several hundred people each year.
The 2024 festival will happen over the last weekend of August (three days from August 30 until September 1). There is a new convenor this year, Ryan Miles, and a larger organising team. It is a 100% volunteer effort, by the community and for the community.
While we are still working out the details, and the format will be slightly different this year, it will be along the same lines as previous years: built around a great program of tours, there will be workshops and events happening on each night – Friday to Sunday – including great speakers and films.
Keep an eye on the website for updates and announcements on ticket sales and the touring program.
‘Van life’ might be a popular Instagram hashtag, but it hides the multitude of reasons why people spend winter in their vehicles. More and more people are choosing to spend their winters outside as they pursue their snow dream. For others it is a necessity as rents climb and erratic winter snow impacts on the availability of work. James Worsfold delves into the issue.
This story originally appeared in the 2024 Mountain Journal magazine (#4). Available as a PDF here > https://themountainjournal.com/2024/03/19/mountain-journal-magazine-4-now-online/
This year’s Mountain journal magazine is now starting to pop up in various places around the high country. Our ‘distribution strategy’ (such as it is) mostly revolves around me chucking a few magazines in my pack or car as I wander around the Alps. So its all pretty haphazard, and reflects where I get to, which means they don’t get placed right across the Alps. But the 2024 edition is now out there, in spots as random as Cope hut, Moscow Villa and Bluff Spur hut on Mt Stirling.
That means the feedback starts. Its always great to get a message from someone who has found one in a hut. The most common spot is Mt Wills, and mostly from people who are walking the Australian Alps Walking Track (AAWT). The next most common spot is Derrick hut (maybe because I’m out there often, so its easy to keep stocked up).
Mountain Journal 
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