G'day Sean. The burn was certainly hot. Pretty much all the standing snow gums are now dead above ground, so it is a sad sight, but they are re-sprouting from the base. So they will return. The knee high springy bushes (dunno what they are called, but you'd know them) that predominate in that area have also been nearly completely burnt to ground level, so the ground is basically back to grass and herby things. But the grass is regrowing. My guess is it will all regrow, so not too concerned in the medium term. From a skiing perspective, it has all been prepped nicely for the season, as all the knee high roughage and logs etc has been removed, so 30 cm of snow and you'd be good to go over much of the Kiandra area. But looking southwards from Tantangara Mountain to the north face of Alpine Hill for example, still lots of that rather unpleasant browny colour visible typical of a real hot fire going through. Looking north from Tantangara Mountain and it becomes at bit patchworky, because that was the northern edge of the fire. I'll stick a few other landscapy photos in a separate post.
But the brumbies....with the reduced veg levels their impacts are quite pronounced in terms of mucking up boggy areas and leaving big stinky piles of poo.
