Hiking Melbourne

Have you ever heard of the Chartreuse Mountains? Yeah me neither. Although you really should have! It is literally one of those hidden gems on the planet. If you're into hiking, it's honestly rather difficult to have a bad time in the French Prealps or Alps. Seriously: Everything looks unbelievable cute, people are super-friendly and then of course there's that thing about french pastry, croissants, pain au chocolat, wine, cheese, ... It's fucking civilised!   Anna jumping the arch Did I mention that the landscape is also fairly stunning? Ooops sorry but you probably already looked at the picture. This is an arch called "La Tour Percée" and with 32m it's the biggest natural arch in the European Alps. If that's not enough, the sucker is also a double arch. I know it's a bit over the top but this is how it rolls. Why haven't I heard about this?!? Good question! Because you can't see that thing neither from the village below no...

Last year Anna and I climbed a mountain and I started writing a post only to put it into the proverbial freeze-drawer of every blog: The draft folder. Now before this post gets serious freezer burn, it's time to thaw it up, add some spice and dish it up. Here we go: Ama Dablam (6812m) is known as one of the most impressive mountains in the world, not for it's altitude, but for it's beauty, aesthetics and the pure exposure encountered high on it's flanks. The mountain has gained in popularity over the past years with post-monsoon 2016 being the busiest season hosting over 400 registered climbers. It's common to encounter high altitude Everest veterans having problems with the technical difficulties encountered on the crux pitches of this climb. Summit - clear skies -32 °C - afternoon of 16th November 2016: Let's get off this mountain. It's four o'clock, we got about an hour of daylight left and we got a lot of abseiling to do. Five minutes la...

How much snow can I expect? Recently I wrote up another description for an upcoming VCC trip and I was wondering how much snow can be expected. Since this is an existential question for all back country adventurers, I gathered some data and put it into the two graphs below.  The green line shows you how much snow you can expect on average. The blue and orange lines are the max and min extremes - there is quite a wide range! And the red line shows you the percentage of bone dry seasons on that day. The Buller graph gives you an idea for The Bluff, Westridge and the Howitt area while the Hotham graph is obviously for Bogong and Feathertop. E.g. my chance of running on grass around The Bluff on the 23rd September is 25% while if I'm lucky enough to find snow it might be around the 30cm mark. You're welcome 😁 Philipp P.S.: Also keep in mind climate change is real and happening which means the red line goes up and the green line goes down. I know. It's suc...

On the northern outskirts of Melbourne's 'burbs you can find the township of Kinglake. Although the name suggests at least a bit of a water body, there's none. This place was actually named after the British historian Alexander William Kinglake. As we all know tragedy struck the area eight years ago and most of it went up in flames. However since then nature, people and the local community recovered and these days Kinglake is hiding some nice hikes which are easy to reach. Over the last couple of weeks I ventured out there for some on- and offtrack hikes. Mostly because I didn't feel like driving all the way to the Cathedral Ranges or the hills above the Yarra.  Because the area sits on a ridge which is roughly 300m higher than the northern suburbs, the Kinglake hikes offer some stunning view over Melbourne. Especially the sunsets are worth a visit which means if you're looking at a nice after-work hike, this is it. Mt Everard Track is a good recommendat...

Here some pics from the weekend. Anja already did a write-up and there's also the logbook of the geocaching event . Enjoy :)

We're back in Melbourne ... at least for a couple of hours since Anna has to fly out to India again. The trip to Nepal was awesome which means there are tons of GPS data, pictures and videos to go through. Hopefully I can put something together which is worth reading. Stay tuned ...

On the 16th November 2016 at 16:00 local time we reached the summit of Ama Dablam 😎

In case you didn't know: Mountaineering is mainly "left, right, repeat". Yes there's some climbing involved ... sometimes ... however hiking is an essential part of the journey even if it includes crampons, ropes and all the fun stuff. Anyway: Soon we're off to the wonderland of Nepal having a go at Ama Dablam:   The Himalayas from 20,000 ft. from Teton Gravity Research on Vimeo .