Table of contents for Issue 196, Winter 2025 in Wild

Wild|Issue 196, Winter 2025

THIS NOTICE WAS PLACED BY ORDER OF THE LAND AND ENVIRONMENT COURT OF NEW SOUTH WALES

Metropolitan Collieries Pty Ltd convicted of offences after overflows of coal-laden water near the Royal National Park Metropolitan Collieries Pty Ltd, a subsidiary of Peabody Energy, has been convicted in the Land and Environment Court of New South Wales for three offences under the Protection of the Environment Operations Act 1997 (NSW). Metropolitan Collieries was prosecuted by the Environment Protection Authority (‘EPA’) and pleaded guilty to two offences of water pollution and one offence of contravening its environment protection licence relating to the maintenance of a dam. Metropolitan Collieries Pty Ltd operates the Metropolitan Colliery, a small underground coal mine located in Helensburgh NSW near the Royal National Park and the Garawarra State Conservation Area. Camp Gully Creek, which flows into the Hacking River, runs adjacent to the south of…

2 min

Wild|Issue 196, Winter 2025

WEIGHTY MATTERS

I’ve been thinking a lot about the past lately. And it’s Wild’s fault. Well, actually, it’s Dan Slater’s fault. Oh, and Adam Flower’s too. Dan, as you’ll read later in the issue, has written an excellent piece that delves into the philosophy of big trips. What defines one? How do they change you? And how do you even go about tackling one? Anyway, since I’ve done a couple of big trips myself—a 53-day solo hike through the Japan Alps, taking in all ten of the country’s highest peaks, and, in my younger days, a 52-day solo hike through the Canadian Rockies, with that trip starting just days after a separate 13-day hike just north of the 52-day one; for all intensive purposes they were the same trip—Dan decided to interview…

4 min

Wild|Issue 196, Winter 2025

SO, YOU WANT TO BE A GEAR REVIEWER?

“Oh, wow! That’s so cool!” Yeah, I know. Reviewing outdoor gear is one of the best jobs I can imagine, and hey—I get to do it! Neat, huh? Or is it? Well, it’s not quite the piece of cake it might seem. For starters, you need a deep understanding of outdoor gear. Seems obvious, but a lot of people think they know more than they actually do (myself included), a fact which becomes increasingly tedious the longer you work in an outdoor store. I did four years in the industry before tackling my first serious review. (NB: I’m now up to something like sixteen years, so my knowledge is growing at a rate inversely proportional to the shrinking of my memory.) Okay, so you’ve got the facts and figures. Now…

3 min

Wild|Issue 196, Winter 2025

LIVING WITH SALTIES

“There are more crocodiles up here than people nowadays,” says taxi driver Ben as we drive “There towards the NT Parks and Wildlife site for captured saltwater crocodiles on the outskirts of Darwin. And while Ben doesn’t want “all the crocodiles in the Northern Territory to be killed,” he also says, “You can’t swim around Darwin. They’ll eat you, no doubt. They’re beautiful animals, but they need to be controlled.” CATCHING CROCODILES IN DARWIN At the government’s collection site, NT wildlife ranger Ian Hunt is busy securing a 1.7m ‘saltie’ (the local parlance for saltwater crocodiles) with silver tape over its snout and hind legs. The croc, caught in a trap in Darwin Harbour earlier in the morning, is one of around 300 captured in the harbour each year. Although…

8 min

Wild|Issue 196, Winter 2025

Q+A with Rohan Kennedy

Kosciuszko’s Main Range is Australia’s highest and snowiest area. And while many skiers, especially resort skiers, are familiar with the gentler eastern side of the range, the Western Faces (as they’re called) are far wilder, steeper and dramatic. In 2024, Rohan Kennedy started an ongoing project to ski fifty classic lines in the Western Faces. WILD: What inspired you to start this quest? RK: I’d half thought about it after first reading Skiing the Western Faces. The book, written by Alan Andrews, was first published back in the early 90s, and it tells the tales of the early days of skiing the Western Faces, right back to the 30s, and maybe even earlier. But it wasn’t until I watched Cody Townsend’s recent Fifty series on YouTube that I went back…

4 min

Wild|Issue 196, Winter 2025

NEXT GEN

Dear Future Super Hero, I am writing to you as I know that you will forget your power many times. I am here to remind you that whatever you dream of is achievable. No obstacle is too big, no challenge too tough. You are the eye of the storm. As steady as the mountain. Strong as the wind. When we are born into this life, we are close to our source. When you gaze into the eyes of a newborn baby, what you see is love. This love follows us through our lives. It is always accessible, yet we tend to stray from it, seeking love from someone outside of ourselves, thinking of meaning and peace as something in the far distance. Truth is, love is always already here. In…

15 min

Wild|Issue 196, Winter 2025

PROJECT 52 A YEAR OF MICROADVENTURING

THE END OF 2022 WAS FAST APPROACHING. It had been another year of half-baked ideas and lists of goals only partly achieved. It had now been years since I’d done a genuinely big expedition (I was busy raising a young family and had a full-time job). Mountaineering in the Cordillera Blanca of Peru, cycling 3,800km in 23 days around NE America, and completing a round-the-world yacht race all felt like distant memories. I was spending week after week, month after month, dreaming. Dreaming of bikepacking the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route, dreaming of thru-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, dreaming of heading to Iceland or Baffin Island with my packraft. I needed to take all the energy and time spent yearning for adventures in far-flung places and put it into a new…

5 min

Wild|Issue 196, Winter 2025

HITTING THE WALL

“Shit. It’s serious!” Hugh, ahead of me, had just craned over massive cliffs to get a better view into the slot; these were his first words. I raced the final few metres to see for myself, and as I panned down into the abyss, my stomach rolled with the exposure. The friendly demeanour of the wide summit plateau was sliced by a menacing doleritic slot, a dark vortex with a void that continued until the bottom was just visible one hundred metres lower. We’d scouted the line from the valley the day before; seeing it now, it was clearly far gnarlier than it looked from below. It was fifty degrees and long, and still caught in the grasps of mid-winter. Rime ice affixed to the walls, while fangs of teetering…

12 min

Wild|Issue 196, Winter 2025

THE COVER SHOT

Perseverance, that’s what comes to mind when I look back at this image. We were on the West Coast of New Zealand, trying to find a way to reach the summit of Mt Aurora via its east face. It’s not a prominent peak, nor a very technical one, but its west face offers a very nice ski line and that was our plan for the day. The base of the east face is relatively steep, and the conditions at the time were very deep with a typical crust on soft snow. I was putting the track in, and it took me more than half an hour to progress 100m in the above-knee-deep snow. The rest of the group was waiting for me to be out of trouble to safely carry…

1 min

Wild|Issue 196, Winter 2025

FLOW

Sliding down the face of the wave, I can’t help but let out a little whoop. The clichés are true: It’s like flying, a pure thrill of movement. I don’t think; I just adjust my weight and turn to ride along the wave. I’ve been surfing for years, without much commitment, progress or skill. But this bit has finally clicked. Rather than putting in another stroke or two so I feel secure, I’m springing to my feet early, watching the wave drop away in front of me and then gliding down its slope. And each time I whoop with the thrill. (That’s on the good waves. There are plenty of others.) When it goes oh-so-smoothly, there’s not much conscious thought. Instead, I’m paddling for a wave and then suddenly on…

4 min

Wild|Issue 196, Winter 2025

SUBSCRIBE TO WILD AND GET A FREE HELLY HANSEN BEANIE

(RRP $40) WILD IS NO ORDINARY MAGAZINE. Since its establishment in 1981, Wild has been the inspiring voice of the Australian outdoors. It is a magazine of self-reliance and challenge and sometimes doing it tough. While it is not necessarily hardcore, what it certainly is not is soft-core. It is not glamping. It is not about being pampered while experiencing the outdoors. Wild does not speak down to experienced adventurers. And Wild does not look on conservation as a mere marketing tool. For over four decades, Wild has actively and fiercely fought for the environment. Campaigning to protect our wild places is part of our DNA. Show that you care about stories that matter by subscribing to Wild. WE’RE STOKED TO BE PARTNERING with Helly Hansen to offer a Beanie with…

1 min

Wild|Issue 196, Winter 2025

FIRES IN THE GRAMPS

As an out-of-control bushfire roared across the Mt William Range in Victoria’s Grampians National Park last summer, vital decisions had to be made about where to deploy valuable firefighting resources. When high-level discussions turned to the communications towers atop Mt William, the park’s highest peak, Prue Daley—who has worked in the Grampians with Parks Victoria for more than three decades—made the case for bushwalkers. More than 60km of new tracks through the range were completed in 2021 as part of the 164km Grampians Peaks Trail, along with three architecturally designed hike-in campsites. One of them, Yarram, was in the direct path of the fire. “I said to our planner, ‘We need to save it’,” Daley recalled in April this year. “He came back and said, ‘I’m sorry, Prue. I think…

11 min

Wild|Issue 196, Winter 2025

BACKCOUNTRY TOURING with Kate Donald

It was halfway through a $12 coffee and a painfully slow lift line that I first caught myself staring past the ropes to the untouched, sparkling snow beyond. No crowds. No queues. Just silence and space. That’s when the seed was planted: What if I tried backcountry touring? From there, it became an obsession. For those ready to take the leap from lift-access to humanpowered powder, here’s everything worth knowing: Where to go; what to bring; and all the stuff nobody mentions until you’re halfway up a skin track wondering if this is how it ends. BEFORE YOU GO Build Your Skills: The backcountry is beautiful, but unforgiving: Ungroomed snow; hidden hazards; no help for miles. Make sure you can ski or ride confidently in resorts: Can you deal with…

4 min

Wild|Issue 196, Winter 2025

DO YOU REMEMBER?

“Remember that epic Budawangs trip, when you lugged around all those delicious stouts and Easter eggs?” “And when we were almost benighted in Jerrara Creek Canyon?” “Or when I baked a whole frozen pizza over the fire in Goulburn Rivers?” As the three of us—Caden, Martine and I—warm up around the campfire after an unforgettable day scrambling, wobbling and wading our way down Morton NP’s Ettrema Gorge, we reminisce on our past shared adventures, the cornerstones of our family-like bond. A year’s soared by since we last enjoyed a camp together—the unfortunate reality of now living over six hours apart—and it too had been a typically eventful one: Caden wound up scaring off a pack of wild dogs in Namadgi NP. “What about at Wingen Maid,” I continue, “when your…

13 min

Wild|Issue 196, Winter 2025

GOING LARGE DELVING INTO THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ‘BIG TRIP’

They say that size matters, and while in many cases that idiom may be a fallacy, in other walks of life (or cycles, or paddles), size very much does matter. Adventurer, author, and sometime Wild contributor Laura Waters recently completed a 2,400km kayak descent of the Murray River, from Bringenbrong Bridge to the sea. This is considered a Big Trip, due mainly to the time taken—76 days. Having previously hiked the Te Araroa (TA) track in NZ (150 days), she’s no stranger to substantial time in action, and I’m partial to the occasional Big Trip myself, having cycled around NZ’s South Island (34 days) and hiked the length of the Sierra Nevada in California (43 days). Curious to talk to Laura about the highs and lows of long-term adventuring, I…

17 min

Wild|Issue 196, Winter 2025

BE HERE NOW

If not now, then when? Five years prior to asking myself this, I was living in a station wagon and enjoying a hiking holiday in Canada. While there, I had joined a small group tour to canoe down the Yukon River. I wanted to see more animals. Quietly canoeing the river seemed like a solution. It gave me the opportunity to chat with the canoe guides. One was a seasonal worker who had travelled to many interesting destinations as a guide. He was clearly passionate about his work. But, as the conversation progressed, eventually he asked what drove me. Why had I packed up my life to live in a car for months on end? I’d explained that I wanted the full sensory experience. I wanted to know what the…

9 min

Wild|Issue 196, Winter 2025

THREE ROUTES UP QUEENSLAND’S MT HALIFAX

MT HALIFAX IS A 1,063M PEAK in the Paluma Range National Park, just a 35min drive north of Townsville. Although not well known around the country, it’s a local gem, one of the tallest mountains in the southern section of the coastal range, and is a premier walking destination for the people of North Queensland. Mt Halifax is an adventurer’s playground, beloved by the outdoors community here for its swimming holes, for its beautiful ridge and creek walks, and for its broad range of vegetation types: Dry vine-thicket and dry eucalypt ecosystems down low; grass-tree and she-oak dominated ridgelines; and superb cloud forest covering the summit plateau in a delicious green cloak of moss and ferns. Despite there being a number of alternate routes to the summit, all tracks and…

12 min

Wild|Issue 196, Winter 2025

LETTERS

[Letter of the Issue] RESPECTFUL DISAGREEMENT Dear Wild, Thanks for your excellent most-recent issue (#195) of the magazine. I read Ross Taylor’s piece on the Arapiles climbing ban with interest. Many excellent points are made in the article. I think Ross is missing a point, however, and is blaming Parks Victoria. They have unfairly become the whipping post. Reading the piece, I was constantly reminded of Jennifer Peedom’s movie Sherpa and the interview with a sherpa who says that he doesn’t want to climb the mountain as it is a deity to be respected and cared for, but that he has little choice economically. At Dyurrite, climbers do have a choice. In the movie, some of the climbers show little respect for the mountain, for themselves, or for the sherpas.…

4 min

Wild|Issue 196, Winter 2025

RESPECT THE ASPECT

Thirty degrees with the sun glowing hotly onto red rock feels good for a moment or two … if you’ve just stepped out of a cold, sunless cavern. But if you’ve been toiling up a long hill under that sun, carrying a pack full of climbing gear, as we did just a couple of weeks ago, it was something to escape from as soon as possible. Luckily for us, aspect favoured us. Shade had not long crept over our destination, so we could dump our packs, mix and drink a generous draught of rehydration salts—refreshingly lime flavoured—and then let the dry air suck up our perspiration while we admired the stunning surroundings in comfortable shade. The cliffline known as Moonarie—an amphitheatre of multi-faceted buttresses that forms Wilpena Pound’s outer southeast…

3 min

Wild|Issue 196, Winter 2025

PEABODY HELD TO ACCOUNT—A BIT Dharawal Country

Readers will have no doubt noticed at the beginning of this issue the double-page advertisement paid for by Peabody, a US multinational that owns and operates Australia’s oldest continually working coal mine, Metropolitan Colliery. The mine is in Helensburgh, where I live (it’s roughly halfway between Sydney and Wollongong), and it also happens to abut the Garawarra State Conservation Area, which in turn borders the world’s second-oldest national park—the Royal. Just beneath the mine lies Camp Gully Creek. It flows tranquilly through beautiful rainforest before, just one kilometre downstream of the mine, it enters the Royal and joins the Hacking River, home to a recently relocated, and much-publicised, colony of platypuses (see Wild Issue #189). Back in September 2022, I was travelling through the lower reaches of Camp Gully Creek,…

6 min

Wild|Issue 196, Winter 2025

WHEN IS A TRAIL NO LONGER WILD?

As I hiked on carved wooden logs and hardened paths, I had no idea I was ‘dodging the bog.’ The bog—better known as the ‘Soddon Loddons’, as I’d come to learn—was a notoriously muddy stretch of trail on the 54km Frenchmans Cap Track in Tasmania’s south. Prior to 2022, when I hiked the trail, daring adventurers would sometimes have to endure waist-deep mud to venture across the South Loddon Plains. But after ten consecutive annual donations of $100,000 from hiking enthusiast Dick Smith, matched by $50,000 yearly contributions from the Tasmanian Government, this piece of bushwalking history was re-routed. Instead of waist-deep mud, hikers on the Frenchmans Cap Track now follow a 4.6km reroute around the South Loddon Plains and the lower section of Philps Lead. The Soddon Loddons were…

11 min

Wild|Issue 196, Winter 2025

THE SCALLYWAGS

Here come the Scallywags. One moment they’re up high on the road; seconds later, it seems—having bounded down a steep bank, traipsed through some light bush, crossed the creek—hey presto, they are on my deck and we are shaking hands. It all happens surprisingly quickly. Over the years, I have watched many people make their way down this bank; it is not big, but it is steep enough and often slippery; most move hesitantly down it. But not the Scallywags. I have arranged to meet four members of the group—Liam, Rich, Matt and Remy—at my place before we head off on a rainforest walk in the Royal National Park, halfway between Sydney and Wollongong. And while none of the four are quite what you might call big and boofy, they’re…

15 min

Wild|Issue 196, Winter 2025

MOUNTAINS OF MYSTERY THE PART-TOLD ODYSSEY OF HADI NAZARI

“No matter how you assemble these clues, you hit anomalies … nothing fits neatly to give irrefutable answers.”– Last Climb, David Breashears & Audrey Salkeld “Even on a mountain, there is still a road.”– Afghan proverb Mountains are keepers of secrets and of truths. We know that George Mallory and Sandy Irvine died on Mt Everest in June 1924, but we don’t know if they reached the summit and probably never will. In modern times, there are contested accounts of summits ‘bagged’. Stories of people of drive and ambition navigating hard routes and tougher journeys within. There is, too, the intangible ‘third man’, or guardian angel—the voice that Touching the Void author Joe Simpson heard in the Peruvian Andes and which others have reported—the unearthly companion captured in the lines…

17 min

Wild|Issue 196, Winter 2025

THE GATES OF THE WILD

From the edge of cliffs still dotted with snow, the canyon walls of the Koyukuk River hundreds of metres below loomed large. The thundering of the snowmelt-swollen river was the only sound in earshot. I was five days into a 28-day traverse across Arctic Alaska, and the terrain seemed steeper than the satellite mapping—the sole information source available to me when planning this section of the route—had suggested for this section. It felt like the immensity of this wild landscape was pressing in from all sides. While I wove through breaks in cliffs towards the river, a grizzly bear popped out on a shelf below, and I stood watching as she stalked across my only path down. Then the bear looked up. It erupted into motion, and charged uphill towards…

14 min

Wild|Issue 196, Winter 2025

5 ISLAND HIKES ON THE GREAT BARRIER REEF

IT’S AN INCONGRUOUS ADVENTURE that fills a rucksack with hiking gear and a snorkelling mask, but tropical escapes are just that. Coral reefs and estuarine crocodiles, sea turtles and stifling humidity, coconut-fringed sand cays and irukandji marine stingers: The Great Barrier Reef islands offer intrepid hikers the quintessential tropical shakedown. This Wild Bunch pulls you off the Far North Queensland coastline for experiences that are about more than sublime vistas and swimming. From Hinchinbook Island (Munamudanamy) to the faraway Flinders Group, these are hikes for spotting wildlife, shredding shorts, unearthing Indigenous culture and cracking coconuts, all within easy reach of the sea but often very far away. And Queensland national parks do three things differently: There are no park-entry fees; trails are graded easy, moderate and difficult; and campsites cost…

5 min

Wild|Issue 196, Winter 2025

GEAR

“The outerwear equivalent of a one-ski quiver; it does it all.” REVIEW THE NORTH FACE VERBIER GTX JACKET AND BIB At home both inbounds and far beyond resort boundaries. LIGHT IS RIGHT FOR MANY in the backcountry. But not for all. Some prefer gear that’s heavier duty. Gear that’s burly, that’s bombproof, that’s truly functional. Perhaps more to the point though, many backcountry skiers or boarders—probably even the majority of them, myself included—enjoy time in lifted resorts as well. They want gear that can pull double-duty, gear that’s at home both inbounds and far beyond resort boundaries. If that’s you, you’re who The North Face’s Verbier Gore-Tex Jacket and Bib is aimed at. Designed for equal parts resort and backcountry, the Verbier combo (you can buy either item singly as well)…

12 min

Wild|Issue 196, Winter 2025

SUPPORT OUR SUPPORTERS

We get it; we know ads aren’t the primary reason you read Wild. But without our supporters, Wild simply wouldn’t exist*. If you love what we’re on about here at Wild, if you’re passionate about both adventure and protecting our natural heritage, if having a magazine that’s full of well-written, crafted stories means something to you, a magazine that fights hard for our environment, then support our supporters; without them, Wild wouldn’t exist. We know that our advertising supporters aren’t, of course, your only options when it comes to choosing what gear you purchase. But if you’re in a situation where you have a few cool options to choose from, and one of them happens to be from one of our advertisers, then show them their support means something by choosing…

7 min

Wild|Issue 196, Winter 2025

WILD SHOT

Bathurst Harbour without wind or waves? Doesn’t happen, does it? Or maybe I’d seen too many YouTube videos of Bathurst Harbour in filthy weather. Sure, one day we battled with waves that had me contemplating a glorious death, but out of our twelve days, we had ten just like this. How are those odds in Southwest Tassie?! JOHN MAINWARING Bellgrave, VIC John wins an awesome Nemo Equipment MOONLITE reclining camp chair valued at $249.95. The chair brings comfort to the backcountry, and is barely noticeable in your pack. A unique pulley system allows you to adjust your sitting position on the fly, and oversized tubes create exceptional strength and stability despite the chair’s light weight. nemoequipment.com SEND US YOUR WILD SHOT TO WIN GREAT GEAR! For a chance to win…

1 min