Table of contents for Issue 173, Sep-Oct 2019 in Wild

Recently I weighed into an unusual courtroom battle taking place in the USA between a father fighting to take his 14-year-old son to Everest Base Camp, and the mother desperate to stop him. What made me unusually qualified to enter this fierce debate was simply that I’ve been there before. In May 2018, I took my then six-year-old daughter, Maya, to EBC and the breathtaking cirque of rock and ice that amounts to the Holy Grail for so many bucket list trekkers. Wrapped in ethereal wonder, fuelled by the storytelling of our youths, Mount Everest—like many of the world’s high places—captivates our imaginations. But is it a place for children? At 5380m, reaching the foot of the world’s highest mountain is a big deal for trekkers of any age and…

My palms are sweating and my tongue feels thick in my mouth. Above me rises a sharp grey spine of rock, undulating like a dragon’s back all the way to the summit of Mount Triglav, the iconic three-headed peak that soars over the rocky alpine valleys of Slovenia’s northwest. The peak is a kind of mountain mecca—Milan Kučan, the nation’s first prime minister, held up summiting Triglav as a sacred duty for every Slovenian—and climbers throng to its 2864m summit. I stare up at them on this sunny day. They look like ants, inching up the sheer limestone face of the towering final approach. The route is wind-whipped and near vertical and terribly exposed. If you want to be Slovenian, though, you’ve got to make the climb: Looking at the…

You know that sinking feeling. You start a trip with high hopes and promise, but then it dawns on you and your hopes deflate; this is not an adventure at all. Instead, it’s its opposite: a mis adventure. And it was that very feeling of deflation that filled us as we looked longingly back up at the ridgeline we’d just spent the last twenty minutes scrambling down. Our legs were covered in scratches. Stinging nettles had ravaged our limbs. And every one of us had gone for at least one uncontrolled slide down the slick, muddy slope. And now we were down in this stream—again. We’d been lured here for a second time; the promise of easier going was hard to ignore. But it was a promise quickly broken. The…

After a hiatus of a couple of decades, UCO Gear is being distributed around Australia again. The company started up in the early 70s in the Pacific Northwest of the US, making the candle lanterns for which they’re best known. For a while back in the 90s, UCO’s lanterns were being distributed around Oz, but then dropped off the radar. But now UCO (UCO, incidentally, stands for Utility, Comfort and Originality) is back. and in the interim, the company has expanded its product line. That said, it still occupies a specific niche: UCO isn’t about what happens on the trail; it’s about making life once you set up camp as comfortable, enjoyable and hassle-free as possible. The classic, original candle lanterns remain part of UCO’s offerings, (which, BTW, are being…

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This issue of Wild dwells on the Franklin in particular not just because the river—and the land it runs through—is extraordinarily precious, extraordinarily wild, and extraordinarily beautiful, although it is all those things, but because it is also extraordinarily symbolic. We have had other great environmental campaigns in this country that have saved other natural places of critical importance, and some of those campaigns have extended across more years than that of the Franklin. None, however, have come up against forces so powerful. Tasmania, as you will read, was run by the Hydro. And if the prodam forces could bring down a sitting premier, again as you will read, what chance did these (primarily but not universally) young activists have? But win they did. And they did so by bringing…

The survival of the snow leopard in the Himalaya is a sure-fire indication of how the conservation programs of all endangered species are faring in the Himalaya. With as few as 4,500 snow leopards left in the world, protecting these magnificent cats is critical. And to get an idea as to how the snow leopard is coping, there is no better place than Ladakh in the Indian Himalaya—a region often cited as the Snow Leopard capital of the world. When Peter Matthiessen wrote The Snow Leopard recounting his legendary journey to Dolpo in northern Nepal in 1973, he created a myth that the chances of seeing the famous cats were on par with winning the lottery. That isn’t the case, for each winter there are regular sightings of snow leopards…

“The track gets a little longer each day but always ends at a pile of windfall or tangled, West Coast bush. It’s hard, dangerous work.” I’m walking through an area of ‘goblin forest’ on the Paparoa Track with a Department of Conservation Ranger. This is New Zealand’s newest Great Walk and the first to be purpose-built for shared use—tramping and mountain biking. The trees around us are gnarled and twisted, with bright green moss clinging to every surface. Native birds like tomtits and fantails flit through the low canopy above. It’s cold, grey and wet; today we are literally up inside the clouds. The ranger listens to chatter on her hand-held radio as we walk along. “They’re about to set off a charge,” she says. We hear the countdown. “Five,…

Our family’s first adventure was a baptism of fire: Five months photographing Australia’s most remote destinations with a four-week-old baby on board. As parents we were as green as it comes, but we survived, we had fun, and we kept on going, turning every new adventure that followed into a chance to bond, learn and grow with Maya. Every cycling trip we tackled, every sailing journey, paddling trip, jungle trek and snowy hike, we took Maya along, and all that adventurous fun fuelled her wanderlust and instilled in her a deep love for the wild. Over the years our trips have become more challenging and our destinations further off the beaten track, and we involve Maya every step of the way. Now, aged eight, she is proof that kids can…

It’s Lawrence of Arabia’s fault: The multi Oscar-winning epic about the life of cult hero T.E. Lawrence has been widely lauded as one of the greatest and most influential films in cinema history. Scenes captured in the picture-perfect sands of Jordan’s Wadi Rum over half a century ago are still raved about today. If you’ve seen those defining moments of Lawrence and his new-found Arabian blood brothers charging kohl-eyed on camels through the blazing desert, you’ll also know why I thought taking a mountain bike through sandy Jordan would be completely bonkers. But just like any country I haven’t actually visited, Jordan proves me wrong. JORDAN’S GOT A BRAND NEW BIKE TRAIL. David Lean, Lawrence of Arabia director, worried that the rocky scrub of the Jordanian desert wasn’t sandy enough…

The surprises for Aussie walkers heading to New Caledonia to tackle the 105km week-long Grand Randonnee 1 track begin before their feet even touch the ground. The first is from the plane window, when—out of a vast turquoise expanse of tropical ocean—a jagged range towers abruptly above the coast, lapped by clouds and clad in dense forest. The second surprise is just how short the flight has been—under three hours from Sydney and less from Brisbane. But the best surprise awaits walkers once their boots hit the trail: the fabulous quality of the hiking. With nearly 8000m of accumulated ascents and descents, the GR1—a tropical version of France’s great GR walks—is rewarding, challenging and spectacular, full of unique landscapes and exotic forests. The trail wanders from shrublands—thick with endemic grevillea,…

Wow! Try saying this sleeping pad’s name ten times, in the cold, out bush somewhere, while trying to fall asleep. I dare you! But that’s half the joy of Nemo’s latest line-up of ultralight sleeping pads. You see, the Tensor range comes in five sizes: short mummy, regular mummy, regular, regular wide and long wide. And then for each size, you can choose either insulated or non-insulated. And so explains the long—yet completely accurate—title of this product. While each Tensor model offers a different size, weight and insulation configuration, underpinning the entire range are the same core technologies. All are made using lightweight 20D polyester and similarly lightweight construction methods. The Regular Mummy (what I’m testing) weighed in at 425g, just over the published 410g weight, although when you add…

“On the wall of my bedroom [as a child] there was a very early map of Tasmania, and it showed two areas—one in the northeast and one in the southwest—marked “Unexplored: covered with impenetrable horizontal scrub and bauera.” And maybe not consciously, but I think I thought, maybe the only way to explore these areas is to do it by river.” One clear spring morning in 1950, a vintage twin engine Monospar spluttered into life at the Western Junction airport at Evandale, not far from the northern Tasmanian city of Launceston. Charting a course over the Western Tiers, the plane continued over Lake St Clair and then deep into Tasmania’s mountainous southwest. Soon it was flying below the tops of the peaks, and the aircraft’s twin engines echoed off the…

Rafters Basin. Eagles Nest. Irenabyss. On the Franklin River, every place has earned its name. Over the years, explorers like Dean and Hawkins, Bob Brown and even the early colonists have all left their mark, literally, on the map. With so many special places named along the river, you would think that one of the most important parts of the Franklin—the start—would have one. Well, to my surprise it doesn’t. I suppose that means I could be forgiven for driving straight past it…right? “I think that was it back there,” said Louie. “Yeah me too,” chimed in Andrew, who sat in the back of the car with Mick; both were buried under an avalanche of gear. We were pulled over beside the Lyell Highway, in a rare place where the…

As I pull my camera out, Richard dribbles his breakfast down his chin, not even able to lean to the side. He manages a weak smile. Moments like this are precious—I can see the pain in his eyes—so I make sure to take a few seconds of video as well. We are in the middle of the wild waters of the Bass Strait, three hours off Deal Island; Flinders Island is more than 50km away. The waves roll through and I look out to the faint pair of shadows on the horizon; our kayaks feel small in such a vast space. And our minds paint pictures much bigger than our eyes can, seeing empty oceans far beyond the horizons. But every minute we wait, tidal currents push us further off…

The story of SCARPA, Italy’s legendary bootmaking company—maker of the world’s first Goretex-lined hiking boot, the first plastic mountaineering boot, and the first plastic telemark boot—begins not with innovation, or attention to detail, or quality workmanship, or grit, or determination, although all those elements were to prove pivotal further on. No, the story of SCARPA begins with two far more Dionysian elements: Sex and beer. Well, allegedly anyway, at least for the sex part (the beer is irrefutable). Back in the Interwar period of the early 20th century, the wealthy Anglo-Irish nobleman, politician, philanthropist and businessman Rupert Edward Cecil Lee Guinness, 2nd Earl of Iveagh, (yes, he of Guinness beer fame; he inherited its fortune and it was during his management of the company that the Guinness Book of Records…

In February 2019, Sammy and I set off down the Franklin River. With river levels low, and hauling all the necessities in life (like Tassie-made gin, port, and wallaby steak), we did more hauling than rafting over the 10-day journey with/on the river. Sammy asked me to marry him floating through the Irenabyss—the Chasm of Peace. A few more days down river—after negotiating the watery puzzles of the Churn, Coruscades, the Faucet and Thunderush—we arrived here in the middle of the Great Ravine, at the Cauldron, where a commercial rafting trip caught up with us as we were having lunch and snapped this shot. Julie wins an OSPREY TRANSPORTER 65 DUFFEL, valued at $199.95. Designed to be tied to yaks on faint footpaths, organising your gear library at home, or…