Mid summer. Time to be out in the hills. I have been out exploring some of the less known peaks in the Vic High
Twins summit
Country, like Big Hill, south of Mt Beauty, and Mt Sugarloaf just near the old ticket station on the Mt Hotham road above Harrietville.
The stand out mountain so far has been the Twins, a bulky, almost hump-backed mountain just south-west of Mt St Bernard in the Central Alps.
Although it is generally seen from the Great Alpine Road, this peak really presents itself from the south side, with impressive slopes and wonderful views and a sense of remoteness despite being barely 9 km in a straight line from Hotham village.
The title of this book pretty much sums it all up: Tasmanian summits to sleep on. This is a gorgeous, large format photo book, focused on 7 peaks that the author, Kevin Doran, has explored and camped out on, from Cradle Mountain in the north and down to Mount Hopetoun in the south west.
This is a large format ‘coffee table style book, with brief stories on seven peaks and fantastic images, and is a celebration both of life time friendships and a long term love affair with Tasmania’s mountain country.
This book, the long awaited second volume covering Tasmania’s mountains over 1,100 metres in height, which covers the west and south west of the state, is absolutely gorgeous.
This volume is considerably longer than the first, with good introductory essays on animals, plants, geology and weather.
As with the first volume, it has profiles on all mountains in the region over 1,100 metres, opening lots of options for peaks you might have glimpsed from afar or seen on a map, but weren’t quite sure about how to get there or what the terrain might be like.
Today’s statement by Tony Burke MP, Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities.
Victorian Government told to get cattle out of National Park
Environment Minister Tony Burke today demanded the reintroduction of cattle in the Alpine National Park undergo a full and public assessment under national environmental law.
Mr Burke said after considering advice from his department, he had determined cattle grazing in the Alpine National Park satisfied the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act requirement that it “may be” a controlled action.
Mr Burke said as outlined under federal law, the Victorian Government now had 15 business days – until April 8 – to refer its current cattle grazing actions for Commonwealth decision or he would force a referral.
Under the EPBC Act, a referral by the Victorian Government following this request or a forced referral by the Minister means cattle will need to be removed from the Alpine National Park until a decision is made by the Minister.
“The Victorian Government was wrong to reintroduce cattle to the Alpine National Park and I have now determined that it needs to be fully scrutinised under national environmental law,” Mr Burke said.
“It is extraordinary how little information the Victorian Government has provided.
“The referral will allow me to determine whether the impacts of cattle grazing in the Alpine National Park have a significant impact on matters protected under national environmental law.
“The Victorian Government has 15 business days to refer the actions to the Commonwealth for decision or I will force the referral.
“Until I have made a decision on the referral, the cattle grazing actions must stop and cattle will need to be removed from the Alpine National Park.
“Cattle grazing in the Alpine National Park is setting a dangerous precedent for the management of national parks across Australia. Victoria can’t expect us to wait around while cattle are stomping over endangered wetlands.”
When the Victorian Government reintroduced cattle to the Alpine National Park, it did not refer the action for consideration under national environmental law.
Since that time, the Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities (SEWPaC) has been meeting with the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment and requesting the information on which the decision to not refer the action was based.
On March 1 the Commonwealth set Victoria a two week deadline to provide all relevant information about the reintroduction of cattle grazing in the Alpine National Park by March 15, 2011.
Well, time really does race when you’re having fun. It’s hard to believe that Mountain Journal is a year old, emerging as it did from my late summer doldrums in March 2010, when winter seemed like it was still lifetimes away.
And what a winter it was – big storms, flooding rains, and enormous dumps of dry powder. Roads closed, communities snowed in, land slips.
stream at Telephone Box Junction, Mt Stirling, VIC
From the original idea of having a mountain-orientated on line journal, influenced by such luminous paper versions of the idea as the Colorado-based Mountain Gazette, it has evolved in various directions: as a forum for various environmental concerns, like alpine grazing and snow mobiles in the back country. As a place to comment on what’s happening across the Alps, and appreciate fun things, festivals, and human-powered activity. Judging by the response (most folks are shy and email me rather than posting comments on the site) it seems that I am not alone in appreciating the various aspects of mountain culture that the Australian Alps offer.
I really enjoyed doing a series of interviews with a range of people connected to the mountains – they shed some light on good work, good ideas and incredible commitment. It has also been a forum to educate and mobilise people, such as with the case of logging near Glen Wills. It became a place to advertise the Australian launch of Protect Our Winters (POW), another side project of mine that will hopefully gather some momentum in 2011.
The most visited sections over the past year have been:
· the Alpine grazing alert
· the ‘side country’ skiing guide to the Hotham area
· the logging alerts
· the proposal to put a ‘skyway’ up onto the Buffalo Plateau
· the launch of POW
· the interviews
· the story on traditional owners of the Alps
But primarily, it has been my way of writing a love story for the mountains that give so much meaning and joy to my life, building on an earlier site on the Alps and broader ‘Bogong bioregion’.
My original vision had been to expand the journal into a ‘real world’ paper version, but the beauty of this project is that it is overtly not commercial in focus, and so the effort of chasing advertising to cover printing costs was all a bit much. So for at least the foreseeable future, this will remain in (green energy powered) cyberspace.
Thanks again for your encouragement and support on the journey so far.
Please feel free to contribute to this project, with news, links, stories, photos, reviews, poetry or any thing else that’s mountain-related.
Here’s to an early winter and deep snow! Regards, Cam
We will also be showing the festival at Dinner Plain in August. Stay tuned for details.
Showing in Melbourne, April 2011
Many thanks to everyone who showed up. We will need a bigger venue next time ...
The Winter Wildlands Alliance created the Backcountry Film Festival in 2005 to help grassroots and professional filmmakers to show audiences their love of the winter outdoors. Since then, the annual festival has been shown in more than 30 towns and cities, and raised thousands of dollars to help efforts to preserve our winter environment.
The 2011 film festival is showing in Australia.
This tuesday, April 12
Films start at 8 pm. Please feel free to arrive earlier to grab a drink.
At 303 (303 High street, Northcote, Melbourne), tram stop #32 on the #86 tram. Its just next door to the Northcote Social Club.
Protect Our Winters is the environmental centre point of the winter sports community, united towards a common goal of reducing climate change’s effects on our sport and local mountain communities.
We believe that to really effect things, consumer behaviour needs to change and that the power of an actively participating and united community can have a direct influence on climate change, now and for generations behind us.
This year’s festival features:
Best of the Festival: Teton Gravity Research’s festival cut of “Deeper” follows legendary snowboarder Jeremy Jones and other top riders as they forsake helicopters, snowmobiles and lifts to venture deep into untouched terrain under their own power.
Best Short Film: “Desert River” from Sweetgrass Productions, is a beautiful ski adventure into Alaska.
Best Environmental Film: “Whitebark Warrior” from TreeFight and Snaz Media, chronicles the decline of thousand-year old whitebark pines due to climate change and efforts underway to save these iconic high alpine trees.
Another great and mostly off-track trip in the Cradle Mountain National Park in Central West Tassie is the ‘Gould circuit’. It’s a nice three day trip to and from Narcissus hut at the northern end of Lake St Clair. If you continue north into the Labyrinth or west onto the Guardians you can easily stretch it into a longer journey (one option is to keep going over the Ducane Range and Mt Massif, to exit onto the Overland track at Ducane Gap).
The following are some slightly vague reflections on the Circuit.
A classic image from the Victorian Alps: Mt Feathertop from Hotham. But without serious action on climate change now, our alpine areas are at grave risk.
First Protect our Winters (POW) Australia action alert
The Victorian government is in the final stages of deciding what type of Climate Bill it will deliver as part of it’s election commitments.
Similar Bills in other places – for instance, the UK and Scotland – have set ambitious greenhouse emissions reductions targets (Scotland has committed to 42% reductions by 2020).
We must urge the Victorian government to deliver a strong, world leading Bill. The final decision about the Bill is being taken now. And a strong Bill will greatly reduce Victoria’s contribution to climate change through driving a shift away from our reliance on polluting brown coal power.
POW Australia has issued its first action alert, asking people to email the Premier, John Brumby. It is available here.
We hope POW supporters, skiers and boarders from across Australia will support this on line campaign. Lets get the Australian winter sports community mobilised to protect our winters.
Graham Hammond trips through a self-induced fantasy. Stephen Curtain collection
‘Winter Dreaming: an Australian Alps freeheel film’ (released in 2008) is both a telemark ski film and a celebration of the fleeting miracle of cold and snow on our old, flat continent. As was noted by Barry Park, in the Age newspaper, it is “part documentary and part eye-candy”.
What makes Winter Dreaming stand-out for me is Stephen’s eye for detail and the often fleeting beauty in the landscape, rather than simply going for the ‘rush’ shots of people ripping down big slopes.
What’s not to like about this album? Climbing mountains, dying on mountains, falling off mountains, frostbite, hallucinations, listening to trees, and surviving ‘normal’ life.
Seven summits is, of course, named after the practise of attempting the highest peak on each continent. What Milagres, an Indie / Rock / Pop outfit from Brooklyn, NY, brings to this album is an atmospheric journey through some of the many things that go through your mind on a big peak, the things that can happen up there, and then the sometimes hard path of going back to the normalness of life when you’re back down, living far below ‘amongst the tiny trees’.
Mountain Journal 
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