From Snow to Ash: Solitude, soul-searching and survival on Australia's toughest hiking trail

(Paperback)

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Description

At the start of the hellish, fiery Australian summer of 2019/20, Walkley Award-winning journalist and suburban dad Anthony Sharwood set off on a journey. Abandoning his post on a busy news website to clear his mind, he solo-trekked the Australian Alps Walking Track, Australia's most gruelling and breathtakingly beautiful mainland hiking trail, which traverses the entirety of the legendary High Country from Gippsland in Victoria to the outskirts of Canberra.

The journey started in a blizzard and ended in a blaze. Along the way, this lifelong lover of the mountains came to realise that nothing would ever be the same - either for him or for the imperilled Australian Alps, a landscape as fragile and sensitive to the changing climate as the Great Barrier Reef.

Reviews

Feature Review - At several points Sharwood laments that even among the bushwalking fraternity, the AAWT is relatively unknown. "Maybe one day it will get the attention it deserves." He needn't worry. For in penning Snow to Ash, Sharwood has almost single-handedly achieved that.--ACT [PRINT] Canberra Times [AUDIENCE: 19,268 ASR: AUD 7,455]
From Snow to Ash is an adventure memoir littered with humour that pays homage to the glorious Snowy Mountains of the Australian Alps.--NATIONAL [PRINT] Australian Geographic [AUDIENCE: 56,887 ASR: AUD 29,806]
Date TBC--Brent McKean, NATIONAL [PRINT] Great Walks Magazine
Date TBC--Kate Allman, NATIONAL [PRINT] Law Society Journal
Date TBC--Keeley O'Connor, NATIONAL [PRINT] Haven Magazine
Date TBC--Melissa Penn, NATIONAL [PRINT] Highlife Magazine
Date TBC--Rama Gaind, ONLINE PS News
Date TBC--Terri Cowley, NATIONAL [PRINT] RM Williams Outback Magazine
Date TBC--NATIONAL [PRINT] Reader's Digest
Date TBC--WA [PRINT] Play, The West Australian [AUDIENCE: 219,242 ASR: AUD 60,792]
If you are looking for more inspiration to explore this beautiful country of ours I would definitely recommend reading From Snow to Ash.--Melissa Chambers, NATIONAL [ONLINE] All Around Oz
Review--QLD [PRINT] Courier Mail [AUDIENCE: 166,502 ASR: AUD 5,884]
Sharwood does an excellent job of conveying the constant sense of worry that solo hiking involves, and an equally excellent job of weaving in salient points about the threatened Alps environment and its history, without it ever feeling forced or taking us out of his story.--VIC [PRINT] Herald Sun [AUDIENCE: 306,571 ASR: AUD 57,674]
Three books set the gold standard for stories about walking [...] Now we might add to that list a distinctive, charming narrative by Anthony Sharwood, about a walk which ends in our backyard.--ACT [PRINT] Canberra Times [AUDIENCE: 28,695 ASR: AUD 7,887]
What begins as a wilderness adventure travelogue becomes a snapshot of a hellish time.--NSW [PRINT] Daily Telegraph [AUDIENCE: 221,641 ASR: AUD 8,191]

Author Bio

Anthony Sharwood is a Walkley Award-winning journalist who has spent the last 10 years as a writer and editor on leading Australian news websites, and has also presented television shows, radio programs and a podcast. In 2020 he released the acclaimed From Snow to Ash, a love letter to the Australian High Country written while walking the Australian Alps Walking Track. The Brumby Wars is his third book.