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

by Anthony Sharwood

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780733645297
Publisher:	Hachette Australia
Publication date:	08/25/2020
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Anthony Sharwood is a Walkley Award-winning journalist who has worked in TV, newspapers, magazines and online news sites. Formerly a sportswriter who covered several Olympic Games, he now specialises in the environment, climate and weather. In 2020 he released the acclaimed From Snow to Ash, a love letter to the Australian High Country written after walking the Australian Alps Walking Track and in 2021 he explored the passionate environmental and cultural battle over Australia's wild horses in The Brumby Wars. Kosciuszko is his fourth book.
Anthony Sharwood is a Walkley Award-winning journalist who has worked in TV, newspapers, magazines and online news sites. Formerly a sportswriter who covered several Olympic Games, he now specialises in the environment, climate and weather. In 2020 he released the acclaimed From Snow to Ash, a love letter to the Australian High Country written after walking the Australian Alps Walking Track and in 2021 he explored the passionate environmental and cultural battle over Australia's wild horses in The Brumby Wars. His books Kosciuszko and Bring Your A Game are both 2024 releases.

Editorial Reviews

Date TBC—Kate Allman, NATIONAL [PRINT] Law Society Journal

Date TBC—WA [PRINT] Play, The West Australian [AUDIENCE: 219,242 ASR: AUD 60,792]

Date TBC—Brent McKean, NATIONAL [PRINT] Great Walks Magazine

Date TBC—Terri Cowley, NATIONAL [PRINT] RM Williams Outback Magazine

Date TBC—NATIONAL [PRINT] Reader's Digest

Date TBC—Melissa Penn, NATIONAL [PRINT] Highlife Magazine

Date TBC—Keeley O'Connor, NATIONAL [PRINT] Haven Magazine

Date TBC—Rama Gaind, ONLINE PS News

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]

Review—QLD [PRINT] Courier Mail [AUDIENCE: 166,502 ASR: AUD 5,884]

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]

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]

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]

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

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]

From the Publisher