Jasper II

Mount Edith Cavell is a mountain located in the Athabasca River valley of Jasper National Park. The mountain was named in 1916 for Edith Cavell, an English nurse executed by the Germans during World War I for having helped allied soldiers escape from occupied Belgium to the Netherlands, in violation of military law.

The photography guide listed this mountain as a ‘must see’ at sunrise. However the guide also warned for a narrow and winding road leading to Mount Edith Cavell which would be covered with potholes, frost heaves and broken pavement. When I drove up Mount Edith Cavell, in complete darkness, I was travelling on perfectly new road. The first 100 yards, I was wondering if I was on the correct road leading to the base of the mountain. It was a good thing that in complete darkness, I didn’t notice that right at the end of the pavement the mountain wall was going straight down.



For the photo above, I used the Cokin filter 121S (3 stop graduated neutral density). For the non-photographers, the lower half of this filter is transparent, where the upper half of the square filter is transparent grey. The grey color partially blocks the bright sky to prevent under exposure of the reflection in the lake. On many websites there are negative reviews about the Coking graduated neutral density filter. Most list a magenta color cast. Therefore I putted the filters to the test during my vacation in the Canadian Rockies. It is true that there is a magenta color cast when the Cokin filters a stacked. However when just a single filter is used, I cannot notice a magenta color cast. Other reviewers refer to blurry photos, well that doesn't seem to be right as well. I was quite happy with my $20 filters, because the reflection improved significant without all the problems that are listed by reviewers.

This is a photo were I didn’t use the Cokin graduated neutral density filter.


The Inuit, living in the Arctic Circle, needed markers in their landscape which is quite empty otherwise and could change significantly due to snow and wind. To create a signpost in this harsh climate, the Inuit created large piles of un-worked stones, which are called Inuksuk. These days, a similar type of monument in the form of a human being, show up in Canada. This symbol is called a inunnguaq, which was the symbol for the 2010 Winter Olympic, in Canada.


Angel glacier hangs from Mount Edith Cavell. It is a nice walk from the parking lot along the path of the former glacier to Mount Edith Cavel and the small glacier lake.



You might think that these chunks of snow are relatively small, but look at the person in the photo below.

Jasper I

In the dark it is a bit hard to find a not so well signed parking lot along the Icefield Parkway. Luckily the navigation system helped to find the right spot. The viewpoint is called ‘Goat Lick’ after the mountain goats that come to this area because of the minerals in the rock. I guess the mountain goats slept in this morning.


The viewpoint is along the Icefield Parkway and the Athabasca River, near Mount Fryatt.


The sun always makes the difference in a photo. On my way back to the hotel, for breakfast, I pulled over a few times to take a couple of shots.


Somehow it was difficult to take a nice photo of the Sunwapta Falls.


The rest of the afternoon the sun played hide and seek which resulted in gray photos. Luckily when I arrived in Jasper the sun returned. The good part of shooting in September is the low relative humidity. The mountains in the photo below, Pyramid Mountain and Mount Kinross, are a few miles from where I was shooting.


Before my late dinner, I decided to drive to Pyramid lake, North of Jasper. Just when I decided to head to the hotel, the sun started shining. There isn’t any Photoshop in this photo, the reflection of the yellow colored leaves along Patricia Lake was really amazing.


The wind speed that nearly dropped to zero, facilitated a near mirror like reflection of the kajaks in Pyramid lake.

Sunwapta Falls

Banff National Park is Canada’s oldest national park, established in 1885. The park covers an area of 6641 square kilometer / 2564 square miles. To the North, the park is connected to Jasper National Park which is the largest National Park and covers an area of 10878 square kilometer / 4200 square mile. To preserve the ecosystem, there are hardly any restaurants of gas stations outside the towns of Banff or Lake Louise. When traveling along the 230km / 142mi long Icefield Parkway between Lake Louise and Jasper, this is something to carefully prepare, since there is only one gas station and four restaurants on the 230km stretch.
The first step was to stock up on granola bars and water when I was in Calgary. Next I filled up the gas tank in Lake Louise, which would give me about 750 km of travelling. Along the Icefield Parkway, there are a few motels. I suspect that these locations are former gas stations, because there are still signs that say ‘next gas station e.g. 75km’. There is still one gas station at the crossing resort, half way the parkway, but with no competitors within 100+ kilometers you can guess what the price is. I didn’t took any changes.

Last night and the coming night I stayed at the Sunwapta Falls Lodge. After many sunrise and sunset shots and a forecast of clouds, I decided to sleep-in this morning. The first destination was the Athabasca Glacier from the Columbia Icefield.

Click on the photo for a larger size photo.

The Columbia Icefield is about 325 square kilometers in area and feeds eight major glaciers. One of them is the Athabasca Glacier. Since 1844, the glacier receded significantly. At the lower part of the photo above, the terminal moraines are visible. In 1844, the area where the parking lot is today was covered with ice. The deposit of stones and gravel at the bottom side of the photo is the 'terminal moraines'. Terminal moraines are large deposits marking where the leading edge of the glacier stopped moving forward.

The rock formations along the parkway are remarkable. It isn’t comparable to the Wave formation in Arizona, but then again I didn’t had to hike 3 mile in 100F to take this shot. This was just next to one of the many parking spots along the Icefield Parkway.


Half the photo opportunities are in front of you. When I looked in my rear view mirror I noticed this amazing scene, while the sun (and my polarizer) added a bit extra color because it was already late in the afternoon.


Surprisingly the GPS data indicated that I was standing at a height of 1925m above sea level.

Lake Louise

Today's hotel was only a five minute walk from Lake Louise, which was very helpful when you want to shoot sunrise over Lake Louise. The head lamp already paid off, because it was really dark this morning when I walked to the lake.




The locations in the Canadian Rockies are, even in September, more crowded than Vermont. Somehow everywhere where I pull over, a bus with Japanese tourists shows up. At Lake Louise they were late and missed the golden hour by 20 minutes. This group of tourists brought along their own dedicated camera man.


After breakfast and checking out, I went to Morant's curve again. The Rockies are aligned north-south, therefore when you are shooting towards the West; the morning with the sun from the East is your best time of the day for nicely lit mountains. After I pulled into the parking lot and stopped the car's engine, I could hear the low rumbling noise from the multiple diesel locomotives. As the photography guide suggested, I always have my camera ready (on the passenger seat with the lens cap off). I jumped out of my car, quickly walked across the glacier street and started shooting. Luckily the canadian freight trains are very long, which created enough time to shoot. The trains are so long that there is an extra locomotive halfway and at the end of the string of freight cars.


When you look at photo from Peyto Lake, you might think I need a bit more training in Photoshop. However this lake really had this blue color. The fine sediments from the glaciers absorb all light except the color blue which is what you see in the photo.

Banff II

This morning, I scheduled another sunrise shot. Again at 6am. When I pulled into the parking lot at Two Jake Lake I was wondering how the clouds could ever give me a nice photo.


Since you never know how it will work out, I decided to set up my camera anyway. While I was setting up my tripod, I had to hold my flashlight in my mount. This wasn't the best situation for shooting. Another photographer was setting up is tripod as well. I noticed that he was using a head lamp. That was on my shopping list for this afternoon.

Then it is like someone turns on an orange light.






As sudden as the orange clouds showed, they also disappeared. There was just enough time to have breakfast and to check out of the hotel before 11am. I walked a little around Banff to find my head lamp, but there isn’t much special about the shops in Banff. For shopping I might as well stay in Houston.

On my map, I spotted the Tunnel Mountain near Banff. However I found out that there is no tunnel in Tunnel Mountain. In 1882 the surveys employed by Canadian Pacific Railway suggested to construction of a tunnel through this tiny mountain. The CPR's General Manager went furious at the suggestion. An alternative route was found and the tunnel was never constructed, but the mountain is still called Tunnel Mountain.


Driving toward Lake Louise, I took the Bow Valley Parkway. This parkway is named after the Bow River. The mountain is Castle Mountain.


Unfortunately it rained nearly all afternoon which isn't the best condition for taking photos. I pulled over at Morant's Corner. Morant was a photographer for the Canadian National Rail, in the early 20th century. His task was to take photos which should make tourists come to Banff, by train. In those days traveling by car wasn't an option. I guess Morant wasn't there in the late afternoon.


I headed for the hotel, from which was only a five minute walk to Lake Louise. I scouted the lake to make sure I would be at the right spot in the morning.

Banff

You have to get up early to get a sunrise shot, but it is well worth it. Yesterday, I was a little late for sunrise at Wedge Pond. This morning I left the hotel a little earlier to make sure I would get the entire sunrise. I succeeded quite well in that part. When I arrived at Vermilion Lake, it was still pitch dark. I set up my tripod and camera with the help of a flash light. The reflection of nearly full moon in the lake in front of a snow covered mountain looks impressive.



Don’t forget that that the photo above is shot with a shutter speed of 25 seconds. When you are actually there, you don’t see anything. From the display at my camera I could determine whether or not I aimed my camera in the right direction. Shooting in the dark is a special experience, because these spots are listed a many guides and in total darkness more cars pull over and persons get out (but you can’t see them). When in the moon light you see the reflection of a tripod, you know they are OK.



After the sunrise shot, I returned to the hotel for my breakfast and subsequently continued to Lower Bankhead. This former city was a mining town, but it was closed in 1922 after an eight month strike. The poor coal quality, labor unrest and high operating expenses made the Canadian Pacific Railway company decide to permanently close the mine.



The pockets of methane gas throughout the mine only non-electric mining equipment could be used. Like the compressed air locomotive above. The coal cars, last used in 1922, were still in reasonably well condition.



In 1922, the Bankhead mine (AB) was closed and the Canadian Government ordered that the buildings had to be moved out of Banff National Park. Today, only a few foundations remain in Lower Bankhead. After 1922, when the steam engines and generators were removed someone put back the washer and nut on the thread. Were they hoping that the mine would be reopened one day?



I’m really puzzled why the clouds in the photo below look like they’ve cut by an egg/tomato slicer.



For photographers there are two useful hours a day. One at sunrise and one at sunset. The others hours you might as well sleep. I used the other hours to do some shooting for locations where the light was not so important or I scouted the locations for the evening shoot. Today's wind gusts went up to 35 km/hour, therefore I selected Lake Johnson to do a sunset shot because this lake is enclosed by mountains.



When I parked my car at Lake Johnson, I noticed a park ranger who was wearing green vest. This vest looked like a bullet proof vest. When I spoke to him, he confirmed that it was a bullet proof vest. I was a bit surprised because I was not aware that a bullet proof vest was part of their daily uniform. I assumed they would only wear it in high risk situations. Then I remembered the series Due South where the main character’s father (Bob Fraser, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer) was shot to dead by a hit man.

Kananaskis Country

During the first day of my trip I visited Kananaskis Country. This is a park that is located outside Banff National Park and therefore you don’t need to pay the park fee. The first stop was Wedge Pond at mount Kidd. This is a relative small pond between a number of mountains.


When I was shooting the photo below there were two other photographers with SLR cameras. This situation happened frequently during the rest of my trip. This is the big difference with my trip to Vermont, last year. Over there I mostly met people with compact cameras.

The most important lakes in Kananaskis are the upper and lower Kananaskis Lakes. Since there were a few clouds I had to wait for nearly 45 minutes before I could take the shot below at the Lower Kananaskis Lake. I was waiting for the shot were both the mountains and the bushes directly in front of the camera would be lit by the sun. The special gloves I wrote about a week ago, already proved to be valuable.


By the end of the day I had to head for Banff. Since I had a few extra hours to spend, I choose the Smith-Dorrien / Spray trail. A gravel road trough an isolated part of Kananaskis. Yesterday, when I got my rental car, it had only 30 kilometers on the ODO meter. Now it looks like it took part in the Paris-Dakar rally.


I was wondering why these gravel roads are so wide. The width would be sufficient to create a highway with two lanes and a hard shoulder per direction. Once I was doing 60 km/h, I understood why I needed this width. Due to the washboard surface I was not only going forward but also going sideways. The control over my vehicle was somewhat limited. Luckily the shocks of my rental car were only a day old and I made it safely to Banff.


When you would like to know the location where I took the photos, click on the photo and you are directed to Flickr were you will see a small map on the upper right corner of the page. I used a gps tracker during this vacation which was very helpfull in identifying the location.

(Click on the map to get a readable map)

Calgary

My vacation started not that great because the plane I had to transfer in Denver had a mechanical problem which resulted in a two hour delay. Better they find out on the ground than in the air.

Luckily my bad luck ended there. For this vacation, I made a reservation for a mid size SUV. Well I didn't know that a Jeep Grand Cherokee 4WD belonged in that class. Maybe because I was so late they ran out of the regular mid size SUVs.

I stopped at a grocery store to get a sufficient supply of water and granola bars, because along the Canadian Rockies there aren't that many restaurants. While I was driving to the hotel for tonight it was already 8pm and got a bit hungry. In the distance I noticed, in a cloud of dust, a number of road trains, a gas station and a restaurant. When the truckers stop it must be good. I got the today's special and probably only with this meal I already exceeded the daily amount of sodium and fat. 

While driving on highway 1, I noticed a new traffic sign 'watch out for pedestrians on the highway'. What are those guys doing walking along the highway? I never spotted one and got safely to my hotel.