Mt Buller Is Home To Australia's Yukigassen Championships (14-Sep-08)

Mt Buller, Vic, September 14, 2008 - Seventeen years after the first Australian Yukigassen event

Seventeen years after the first Australian Yukigassen event, Mt Buller plays host to the Australian Yukigassen Championships of 2008!

Originating in Sobetsu, Japan, Yukigassen means ‘snow battle’ in Japanese and is hosted right throughout the world, and exclusively in Australia at Mt Buller. The competition was first hosted at Mt Buller in 1991 while the now vice-mayor of the Showa Shinzan province, in Sobetsu, was an employee of Mt Buller.

Yukigassen returned to Mt Buller in 2007 and again in 2008, with over 80 entrants in this year’s competition, Maintenance Madness taking home the trophy.  Team Unisux and Buller Sports came a close second and third.

In order to host the event, Mt Buller adheres to strict international standards and regulations of the competition, which involve building regulation-sized snow walls, snowballs, and course. Set on a playing area 40m x 10m, teams of seven compete to steal a flag at their opponents’ end of the playing area while trying not to be hit by snowballs thrown by the other team.  Each team receives 90 snowballs per three-minute period and each match is a best-of-three competition.   

Laurie Blampied, general manager of Buller Ski Lifts said Mt Buller was proud to be the home mountain of Yukigassen, linking Mt Buller to its Japanese employees past and present.  

“The fantastic conditions right now mean we are able to host Yukigassen to meet the strict international standards of the Japanese, and we look forward to making it a regular feature on our events calendar each year,” he said. 

Mr Tadashi Iori, assistant director of the Showa-Shinzan International Yukigassen Executive Committee said that in Japan they play Yukigassen passionately, and use it as a way of promoting awareness about climate change, and they rejoice that Mt Buller is again hosting this entertaining event.

As well as Sobetsu and Mt Buller, annual Yukigassen tournaments are held in Kemijärvi, Finland, and Vardo in Norway.