A Conference and Special General Meeting will be held at the Copthorne Millennium Hotel in Palmerston North on Saturday 27 October 2018. Clubs in lower North Island are urged to send representatives.  All other clubs are very welcome to send their representatives.

A programme for the Conference and Special General Meeting is now available here.

Most of the day will be dedicated to a Conference and workshp which aims to discuss tramping opportunities and facilitate volunteer hut and track maintenance work in the Ruahine Ranges.  

All FMC club members are welcome to attend the Conference, not just SGM delegates and proxies. If you wish to attend the Conference, please let us know by e-mailing eo@fmc.org.nz.

The purpose of the Special General Meeting is to confirm FMC's new rules, which were circulated to all clubs in March.

Clubs can find a guide to voting, delegates and proxies here. An attendance and voting form will be sent to all clubs by e-mail and post, but is also available online.

Draft new manegement plans for Aoraki / Mt Cook National Park and Westland / Tai Poutini National Park have been published and are available on the DOC website.

Some of the most controversial proposals include a Park & Ride system for access to Mount Cook Village, the replacement of helicopter landing zones with a "soundscapes" approach, the opening up of the Hooker Valley to helicopter landings, access to dogs in Westland National Park and an amenity area for a gondola to Almer Hut on Franz Josef Glacier.

FMC will be submitting on both management plans. Given the importance of many of the issues raised, we strongly encourage our members to send in their own submissions also, before 9 November 2018. Click on the links above for instructions on how to submit.

As recently highlighted in the news, the population of Himalayan tahr in the Southern Alps appears to be out of control. While it’s meant to be capped at 10,000 animals, current estimates put it at 35,000, with the potential to increase by another 5,000 during the next breeding season.

Read more

FMC’s Patron Arnold Heine has offered a discount book service to FMC members for many years. Once a feature in past issues of the FMC Bulletin, the book listings are now online. Only while stocks last! Most titles are selling for well below Recommended Retail Price. Many are hard to get and some are or are likely to become classics.

Read more

The Backcountry Trust funds and supports volunteers to maintain huts and build tracks for outdoor enthusiasts including trampers, deerstalkers and mountain bikers.

Do you have a project in mind? Grant applications for Round 9 are open until the end of September.

You can apply here:

https://www.backcountrytrust.org.nz/apply.html

Diggers Hut in Makawakawa Stream (Ruahine Range) was recently swept away after a landslide diverted the stream through the original hut site. While the hut appeared to be of solid build, it goes without saying it's out of use.

We're just processing the final few club entries, and then the photos will be off to Richard Young and Shaun Barnett for judging.

Congratulations to the top entries from our FMC Individual Supporters. For entry purposes, they were treated as all 'belonging to one club'. The individual supporter top shots continue into the main competition, and have been shared on our FMC Facebook page.

The results of the main competition will be published in the November issue of Backcountry magazine, and a slide show of all entries made available to clubs and supporters who entered in December.

FMC Travel Club has started advertising trips for 2019. Destinations so far include USA, Canada, the European Alps, East Africa and Zanzibar, Bangkok to Saigon, the Philippines and Madagascar.

For more information, click here.