With Mont turning 40 this year we're taking time to look through the archives. And when we say archives, we mean unmarked boxes sequestered here and there in the Mont Warehouse. In one of these dusty boxes, we found a stack of slides along with this story regaling a day mountain biking in Moab in 1999 by Mont staff member David.
After a busy two months, we decided to head up to the Main Range to get away for a few nights. Sadly the forecast put a dampener on our multi-day plans, so instead, we settled for an overnight camp perched on the ridge above the Sentinel where we knew we would get sunset and sunrise views.
In a year where many of us spent large periods stuck at home, the adventures that have been possible are so much more important. Here we present just some of our favourite photos from this year courtesy of our customers, Mont Ambassadors and Mont staff.
... And probably the most important thing to pack is a good amount of respect for the environment, commonsense and experience. And knowing when to retreat from a situation is really important. There is always next time.
Following reports of isolated tree deaths throughout Kosciuszko National Park in 2007-08, sub-alpine forests in the Australian Alps are now in widespread decline. A team of environmental scientists from the Australian National University are working to learn more about this devastating problem and how to stop it and they need your help.
The Walls of Jerusalem is one of Tasmania’s finest short walks. It is a very popular walk but since Covid 19 arrived Tasmania Parks has enforced a numbers limit of 32 walkers per day. This is a new thing for me, in the past, it has often been a spur of the moment decision to head to “the Walls”. But in hindsight, it is a good move to limit overuse of the park, and I think it might be worth continuing into the future. It just requires a bit of preplanning.
While we can't get over there, photos from Mont Ambassador Chris Warner's recent climbs will have to do. As a mountaineer and climber, Chris has been a member of the Mont Ambassador team for over 10 years. We've outfitted him for many of his expeditions including his summits of many of the World's great peaks.
As summer approaches, I keep looking through my list of past walks to see which ones I want to do again.
In September 1986 I walked from Lake St Clair, up past Little Hugel to Mt Hugel. I then continued down the western slopes to Lake Hermione, followed a valley up to Lake Petrarch and walked back down to Lake St Clair. A good partly offtrack bushwalk. This time I only had two days, so the plan was to camp next to a tarn up on the Mt Hugel plateau.
I recently had a good chance to continue using my Mont Zero Super Light sleeping bag and Mont Zero Ultralight down jacket when I rode the 2020 Terra Australis Bike Epic. Due to the Queensland and Victoria border closures, the 2020 version of this annual bike-packing race was shortened to a 1500km self-supported race from Byron Bay to Canberra in late September.
One of the biggest jobs at Mont is customer service, with the inbox sometimes a little overwhelming! But the emails are overwhelmingly positive; questions about our gear, emails about how well a customers gear worked, and fun stories and photos from the wild.
It isn’t all smiles, though, negative emails do occasionally pop up. But not to let that get us down, often these emails highlight a failure of communication on our part or provide information for us to reflect upon and improve.
After the Victorian "lockdown" we were itching to get up into the mountains for a bit of open-air goodness. Not being able to camp or travel over winter can build one's anxiety to mega levels when all you dream of is the outdoors!
Following reports of isolated tree deaths throughout Kosciuszko National Park in 2007-08, sub-alpine forests in the Australian Alps are now in widespread decline.
