MSC Social Media Manager - Call for Proposals

Mountain Safety Collective (MSC) is a not-for-profit association that produces daily Backcountry Conditions Reports during the snow season for the NSW and Victorian alpine regions. While these reports and other content for the backcountry community are published on the website at https://mountainsafetycollective.org, MSC’s social media accounts are becoming increasingly important as the primary contact point with our audience.

MSC is seeking to contract the services of an experienced Social Media Manager to oversee our social media channels, facilitate engagement and grow our audience.

MSC Welcomes Whiteroom as a Supporting Sponsor

Whiteroom Tours was founded on the principle of creating tours & ski holidays that are fun, adventurous and allow you to experience each destination from a local’s perspective.

MSC President's Report & AGM 2022

At the 2021 AGM there were four points to summarise the direction that MSC planned on going in 2022:

Continue to develop/strengthen existing relationships
Recruit Field Observation Team
Incorporate Digital Field Observation Plots to data sparse areas
Grow community engagement

The First Avalanche Operations Level 1 Course in Australia

From September 11-18 this year, the Canadian Avalanche Association (CAA) ran the first ever Avalanche Operations Level 1 Course in Australia at Charlotte Pass. 12 people were signed on, including ski patrollers from Thredbo and Hotham, backcountry guides, MSC ambassadors and more. It was a great privilege to join this group that is pushing snow safety forwards in Australia.

Victorian Backcountry Festival 2022 Roundup

The first weekend of September 2022 saw a few hundred backcountry enthusiasts gather at Mount Hotham for the first in-person Victorian Backcountry Festival since 2019. A purely volunteer-run event, it ran over three days with a rolling schedule of backcountry tours, workshops, talks, short films, gear repairs and competitions.

July 2022's Slabby Snowpack

It’s not often you hear a backcountry enthusiast hoping for more rain (Be careful what you wish for!), but this has been the case through July as we gingerly avoided an ongoing wind slab problem in the alpine. These conditions have been relatively unusual for Australia in terms of the number and frequency of avalanches and the conditions that caused them.

The Sentinel Ridge Slides - June 2022 Avalanche Analysis

Three large avalanches were reported to MSC on Tuesday 28 June, 2022. The avalanches occurred in the Main Range of NSW in the Sentinel Peak area. For the purpose of this article we have named the avalanches as Sentinel 1, Sentinel 2 & Sentinel 3.

As we discuss in the conclusion, rain with warmer (+0º) temperatures creates stress on the snowpack and means it’s time to avoid avalanche terrain.

MSC's Not-For-Profit Funding Model Explained

Here at the Mountain Safety Collective (MSC), we sometimes get asked “What does being a Not-for-profit mean”? At its simplest level, MSC is a registered not-for-profit which complies with strict Australian Tax Office (ATO) requirements to ensure that all funding is spent on providing services to the community, which in our case is the Australian backcountry community.

MSC co-funding Australia's first CAA Avalanche Operations Level 1 professional course

As part of our professional development program, Mountain Safety Collective (MSC) is pleased to announce co-funding of the first ever Canadian Avalanche Association (CAA) Avalanche Operation Level 1 (Ops 1) course to be held in Australia.

Snow Crystals - Jewels of the Heavens

Snowflakes are just ice crystals stuck together. The recipe is very simple: One oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms, add cold temperatures and you get ice. This seemingly trivial structure however is full of surprises, as no crystal is the same as another, ever!

Science differentiates between twelve different types of ice in our universe. On Earth only one type of ice exists, the one we all know and it can float on water. Ice on Earth has many faces: Ice streams at the poles, glaciers in the high mountains, permafrost, frozen waterfalls, snow, hoarfrost, hail, Jack Frost on the windows…