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Environment, news, culture from the Australian Alps

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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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Heatwave Dreaming

It’s Labour Day Weekend. It’s March and, across the state, outdoor events are being cancelled because of the heatwave (even the Moomba parade in Melbourne!). Much of the state is on high fire risk. There is even a heatwave warning for lutruwita/ Tasmania. It’s a weekend to hunker down and stay out of the heat. And possibly day dream about colder weather and winter adventures.

I recently posted a short video about a group of women who rode their pushbikes through a section of the European Alps, climbing and then skiing/ riding mountains along the way. That got a response from various people including Tom Wainwright, who shared the details on his first trip to the Bogong High Plains, which included a bike ride and ski. They rode to Mt Fainter going along the Fainter Fire Trail.

Continue reading “Heatwave Dreaming” →

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Save our snow climate data – we won!

The following information come from Protect Our Winters (POW) Australia.

After POW alerted the winter snowsports community to the fact that that the frequency of snow data collection at Spencers Creek in the Snowy Mountains has decreased in recent years, Jeremy Kinley, Acting Manager of water for Snowy Hydro, has confirmed that “we have agreed that we will commit to more regular measurements at Spencers Creek from next year onward.”

The data on snowpack collected by Snowy Hydro provides our best snapshot of snow pack over time. Earlier in the year, POW reported that:

‘Data collected in 2022 was sparse in comparison to previous years, with only four records collected from 1st of May to 31st of July. This is a reduction of over 60% compared to the average of the previous decade (2012-2021). 

‘Snowy Hydro explained their reduction in data collection in 2021 as a means to avoid sending staff to remote locations in poor weather conditions.

POW launched a campaign to get Snowy Hydro to continue recording their valuable data on a weekly basis from the first snowfall throughout the season. This campaign has been a success. Congratulations to everyone involved.

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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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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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This is what climate change looks like

Australia has always experienced erratic weather and climate extremes. But, as demonstrated in this cartoon from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), human induced climate change is now ‘super charging’ those natural cycles.

So, when we get an El Nino pattern, it is hotter and drier than it would have been otherwise. Same with the wetter conditions that come with a La Nina event.

Continue reading “This is what climate change looks like” →

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Will this snow last til winter?

Snowfalls during May have got all winter lovers excited. With more on it’s way this week (and ‘opening weekend’ getting close) lots of people are saying the current snow is likely to form the basis of this winter’s snowpack, at least at higher elevations.

The image above is a rendering from Sentinel, showing the Snowy Mountains on Monday May 22. The deep valley in the foreground contains the Thredbo resort, with ski runs clearly visible.

Continue reading “Will this snow last til winter?” →

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Snowy Mountains snowpatches survive summer for first time in a Quarter Century

As the Main Range sits under a lovely (and rapidly melting) May snowfall, new research into snowpatches provides an interesting result.

Once a common occurrence, the survival of three snowpatches, two on Mount Twynam and one on the Etheridge Range near Mount Kosciuszko was the first time snow had lasted winter to winter since 1997.

Continue reading “Snowy Mountains snowpatches survive summer for first time in a Quarter Century” →

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‘A brief story of a remarkable Historical gathering’

Mountain Journal has published a number of stories in recent years about the fact that Jaithmathang Original Country elders are returning to the mountains to reconnect with their Yerto (meaning land/country high up).

As Jaithmathang Senior Elder, Loreman and Songman, Goengalla Jumma Myermyal Minjeke said in 2021, “in 1830 there was a population of more than 600 Jaithmathang Original People living in our isolated pristine Yerto Alpines, in our Mountain Ranges and on our fertile High Plains Country”. 

“By the early 1850s our population was decimated and there were only a handful of our people left; there was the arrival and occupation by pastoralists and miners, and then the numerous massacres and killings. The last few Jaithmathang who were left were removed away from our Country to other surrounding settlements”.

Now reconnection is happening. This story comes from Karina Miotto and Goengallayin Jumma Jumma.

Continue reading “‘A brief story of a remarkable Historical gathering’” →

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Climate change is driving fire and reducing snow pack

The country’s climate has warmed on average by 1.47C since national records began in 1910, according to the new State of the Climate report released earlier this week.

It reinforces what we already know about climate change impacts on mountain environments:

  • Since the 1950s, extreme fire weather has increased and fire seasons are starting sooner and ending later. We can see the impacts of this in burnt out snow gum woodlands and alpine ash forests in a state of ecological collapse.
  • Snow depth, snow cover and number of snow days have decreased in alpine regions since the late 1950s. (This decline has been known and reported on for years).

Continue reading “Climate change is driving fire and reducing snow pack” →

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‘Forests, Snowpack and Wildfires Appear Trapped in a Vicious Climate Cycle’

Fire is becoming an increasingly destructive force in mountain areas. This has many environmental and economic impacts. A new study from the USA investigates how extreme wildfires in 2020 affected the water cycle in key mountain forests that store water in the form of snow pack that is released through spring. The findings are consistent with earlier research in the Australian high country.

Continue reading “‘Forests, Snowpack and Wildfires Appear Trapped in a Vicious Climate Cycle’” →

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