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Winter Van Life

‘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/

Continue reading “Winter Van Life” →

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Getting ready for winter

Yes, last winter was a bit ordinary. But to be a skier or rider in Australia is to be an eternal optimist (did you see the story this week that hundreds of the world’s leading climate scientists expect global temperatures to rise to at least 2.5C above preindustrial levels this century?) so we have to remain hopeful.

Its May. Its getting cool. Its only a few weeks til the start of the ’snow season’ (yes, it is just a capitalist construct). But its still very exciting that winter is getting close.

Here is the beginning of a list of backcountry events and human powered adventure in the high country. Fingers crossed for a good winter.

Continue reading “Getting ready for winter” →

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Mountain Icons: the majesty of Mt Buffalo

Mountain Journal has slowly been compiling a collection of stories of ‘mountain icons’. In this contribution, Anna Langford reflects on her long connection to the Buffalo plateau.

How instinctively we reach for the superlatives – the oldest, fastest, biggest – when we want to distinguish something above its peers.

Mount Buffalo has no such claims on its fellow mountains: it is not the tallest, steepest, or remotest… and say nothing of its dismal snowpack that frays year by year.

There is only one superlative I insist on assigning it. To me, Buffalo has always been the grandest of our peaks.

Continue reading “Mountain Icons: the majesty of Mt Buffalo” →

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Mountain Journal magazine #4 now online

Once a year we produce the Mountain Journal magazine. It is distributed through mountain and valley towns from Melbourne to Canberra each autumn. 2024 is the fourth print edition, and the magazine is being distributed at present.

You can also enjoy this PDF of the magazine MJ4.

Continue reading “Mountain Journal magazine #4 now online” →

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2024 Backcountry film festival Melbourne screening – April 22

The annual Backcountry Film Festival is put together by the Winter Wildlands Alliance (WWA), screens around the world, and is hosted locally by Friends of the Earth and RMIT Outdoors Club.

The 2024 season will screen in Naarm/ Melbourne on Monday April 22.

It will be screening a collection of short documentaries and ski movies about the pursuit of adventure in the mountains, artistic vision, friendship, and how the snowsports community is adapting to a changing environment.

Continue reading “2024 Backcountry film festival Melbourne screening – April 22” →

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MJ turns 14

JAN 2024

What even happened last year? Another mild summer, no big fires, then truly dazzling amounts of autumn snow, a great start to winter, then, nothing. Rain and warm temps and misery and the snow pack was gone, not to return. Early end to the season in many places, especially the lower resorts. The usual denial and grumpy guys ranting on line if you dared to mention the ‘climate’ word. Muddy spring and now, another mild summer – a bit different to the El Niño scorcher we had been expecting (so far at least).

Yes, this is the new reality. Climate systems turned on their heads. Wild floods up north, while more than 14 million hectares burnt across the Northern Territory alone during our spring. Erratic winters and wild swings of weather. Buckle in, because it’s not going back to ‘normal’ any time soon.

Then there are the wars raging across many parts of the planet.

And yet, the world can still feel right. Those long autumn days with a slow wander across snow plains, the light rich, the air cool, the distant peaks calling. We are blessed to live in a safe corner of the planet with beautiful hills and forests, rivers and high plains. The freedom and safety to explore. Let us be grateful, as we work for a better world for all.

You can read the full reflection here.

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Backcountry film festival – Melbourne, 2024

Date claimer / Call out for local films

Each year the Backcountry film festival (BCFF) celebrates the connection between humans and wild winters. It is a ‘collage of human-powered stories and backcountry-inspired experiences. Backcountry Film Festival ignites wild conversations and inspires action to communities that celebrate the present while looking towards the future’.

For more than 10 years, Friends of the Earth has held the BCFF in Melbourne before winter. The 19th Annual Backcountry Film Festival is screening documentaries and ski movies about athletic pursuit in the mountains, artistic vision, friendship, and how the snowsports community is adapting to a changing environment.

In 2024 we will again co-host the Melbourne screening with the RMIT Outdoors Club. We are looking at dates in late April or early May.

We are looking for some short Australian made backcountry films to be included as part of the evening. Yes, 2023 was grim. But if you have a film you would like to see screened at the festival before an enthusiastic audience, please get in touch: cam.walker@foe.org.au

Continue reading “Backcountry film festival – Melbourne, 2024” →

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Are you suffering from Shifting Baseline Syndrome?

How often do you see an image or vista like this when you’re in the mountains? Whether you drive up from the valley towns through mile after mile of grey alpine ash trunks, or wander, ski or ride through the snow gum ghost forests of the high plains, you are witnessing a world that didn’t exist a generation ago.

Whereas we would have infrequent hot fire in the high country in the past, now we have fire on endless repeat. The forests get younger as we get older, yet this new reality of dead trees and thick regrowth becomes understood as being ‘normal’. Many people don’t recognise that what they see as they look out from a ski resort over burnt out hills is actually ecological collapse in real time.

Are we all just witnessing a deteriorating landscape and thinking it is ‘normal’ because we don’t have a memory of what was here before?

Continue reading “Are you suffering from Shifting Baseline Syndrome?” →

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When will the snow industry get its act together?

All snow lovers know how bad last winter was. As Mountain Watch noted in it’s end of season wrap, it was one ‘that went out with a whimper, ending two weeks early for most resorts thanks to a low snow year, above average temps and hot northwest winds and the fastest meltdown in memory’.

‘How to summarise the 2023 season? Given the slow start, early finish, three-week ice age during July, spring temps and hardly any snow in August and summer temps in September it’s fair to say, as far as the snow totals and snow quality goes, the 2023 season was pretty bad’.

Of course we will continue to have good and bad winters (and fingers crossed for 2024!).  But we also know that climate change is reducing the overall amount of snow we receive in Australia. The snow pack has been in decline since at least 1957. How grim it gets will depend on how the world responds to the threat of climate change now.

Continue reading “When will the snow industry get its act together?” →

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The elephant in the room

The Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) is a 4,200 kilometre track that runs from Mexico to Canada. Since Cheryl Strayed published her bestselling book about hiking the PCT, Wild (adapted into a movie starring Reese Witherspoon in 2014), it has become arguably the world’s best known long distance walking track. The dream of doing a long long walk through wild terrain is a dream for many people.

However:

‘Wildfires now regularly close vast sections of the trail in the late summer, and water sources in the desert and high Sierras are drying up, making remote regions virtually impassable. Hiking the trail end-to-end in one year, a bucket-list item for many long-distance backpackers, is now “almost impossible” due to climate change.’

There are many reports that numbers of walkers are down due to the current season and there being too much snow in long sections of the higher mountain areas of the route.

Wherever we are, whatever mountain range we are in, the reality of climate change gets ever harder to ignore.

Here is Australia, we have a different problem: lack of snow.

Continue reading “The elephant in the room” →

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VIC backcountry festival powers ahead despite low snow

Despite sad snow conditions, the 6th Victorian backcountry festival will happen over three days in early September.

It will happen in and around the Mt Hotham resort, with all the usual components of the festival that we love – the tours, workshops, repair café, demo village, speakers program and outdoor bar. This year we have two festival hubs – The General, plus the Last Run Bar.

Please register for the festival here (you need to register to be able to book tours). Check below for full details.

Continue reading “VIC backcountry festival powers ahead despite low snow” →

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Lower elevation resorts rapidly becoming non viable under climate change impacts

We know that climate change is reducing the overall amount of snow we receive in Australia. The snow pack has been in decline since at least 1957. We also know that the loss of snow is being felt especially at lower elevations.

This is certainly being experienced this winter, where places like Tasmania and lower resorts like Mt Selwyn have had almost no snow.

Continue reading “Lower elevation resorts rapidly becoming non viable under climate change impacts” →

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