With the warm weather still holding out this week, Cecil and I returned to kananaskis to spend an afternoon around the lower lake. We did stop off at Evan Thomas Creek as we drove along highway 40 toward our goal, but all except the first 4 images in the gallery below are from the lower lake.
Nothing to write home about today, but plenty of the usual icy foregrounds shot in good company in a stunning location. I didn't caption the gallery today as the shots speak for themselves.
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It's hard to believe that the winter closure programme will begin on saturday this week. That means that christmas is almost here and I've done no shopping at all.
The road closure program shuts off the southern end of the elbow valley, so that bears and other critters can enjoy an undisturbed hibernation. The closure works together with the closure of a section of highway 40 south and the entirety of the powderface trail, together it seals off a huge area of forest wilderness. Though it is quite restrictive in terms of limiting access to some great hiking locations, I think it's a good thing. Not only do the animals remain undisturbed but we get to experience the opening in may, when all of a sudden there are thousands more hectares of wilderness to explore again. There are only a few shots today, the main image is a bend in the elbow river where the spring spate deposits the casualties of winter. Behind the melee of forced timber from left to right stand Banded Peak, Mt Cornwall and Mt Glasgow. In the middle set way back on the horizon is Romulus and Remus two very distinctive mountains, and to the right is the eastern end of Nihahi Ridge towering above the forest (click the image for a larger view) The gallery has captions including for the highlight of the day, several of the wild horses that live in the area. We've had a couple of really nice warm days this week so Cecil and I went out to kananaskis to make our usual 'round' in search of images. We started out at 'The Widowmaker' then on to Barrier Lake before moving south on highway 40 down to kananaskis lakes.
Our first call there was to the dam at the north east corner of the lower lake, which was well shaded and still frozen solid. The main image today is from there, you can see the dam cutting a straight line across the middle of the frame above the shadow fingers. We had hoped to visit the upper lake before shooting another sunset from the south east of the lower lake (our usual spot). But thick cloud moved in just 45 minutes before sunset and ended that plan. The upper lake was incredibly windy with huge waves and spray killing any chance of shoreline shots there today, so the day was cut a little short toward the end. We did have a great day nonetheless and left happy with our haul of shots. The gallery below has captions as usual, to guide you along the way. When making the final shot in the gallery of my previous post, I commented to Cecil that I thought Mt Nestor might make a good sunset location. After waiting a week for conditions to be right, I tired of waiting and decided that tonight was the night to give it a go.
All of the sunset predictors pointed to a 'moderate' event with low colour and almost no high cloud to help provide bounce light, but I was keen to test the theory. I left home late in the day and made the 90 minute drive with ease in the traffic free conditions, arriving in good time to get set up. I didn't shoot anything at all except for Mt Nestor today, I had a cursory look around along the way, but didn't see anything that grabbed my attention enough to warrant stopping and making an image. The perfect vantage point for the mountain is the kananaskis helipad car park, which was surprisingly cold this evening. I set my tripod in the back of the truck to give me a better view over the forest but kept some trees in the frame to provide a foreground. I'm not sure how I feel about the output from the evening, the light along the ridgeline in the image below did help in producing something interesting but there's a lot of dull light below it. Before this shot, the light was very yellow and didn't carry any colour until it drew close to the summit, which is a real shame because it's a beautiful mountain. I think I'll give it another go one evening when the sunset forecast is better, until then here is the best of tonight, a sunset tentacle reaching along the south western ridge of Mt Nestor with Goat Mountain illuminated directly behind. The gallery shows the transition from daylight, through sunset and into to the blue hour beyond (which today was more pink than blue) With the weather holding out Cecil and I decided to make the most of it and set out on another photo tour today, this time taking highway 742 (Smith Dorrien Trail). We began at the north end of the highway overlooking Canmore where we were soon stopping to shoot some of the fringe ice on Whitemans Pond.
We actually found quite a few shots at the small hydro power pond before continuing on to Spray Lakes where my main shot today comes from. I love the abstract nature of this shot which captures the spindrift blowing across the thin lake ice. From Spray Lakes we continued south stopping to shoot Mt Nestor at three different locations along the way. It's such a wonderful pointed lump that you can easily shoot it a number of times without tiring of it. The gallery below has captions to guide you along the way. With a new moon due on wednesday, dark skies were guaranteed over kananaskis lakes on tuesday night. I checked my resources and found predictions for almost cloud free, low humidity air so decided to make the trip out there in the hope of making a sunset and then hanging around for a milky way shot.
There's no galactic centre visible in the northern hemisphere at this time of year, but on a moonless night with dry clear air you can still make a nice shot of the northern arm of this beautiful array of stars. Having this vast wilderness to myself is common on a winter weeknight and tonight was no different. I had the full winter gear on for the first time this year, and a flask of tea for the stargazing later. I had the whole of the lower lake to myself for sunset shots. When I first arrived the lake was incredibly calm and I quickly set up and made a nice multi shot panorama of the Opal and Elk mountain ranges reflected in the mirror like surface. I followed this with a number of sunset shots from various locations along the shore. Once sunset was over I packed away the gear and made my way to the upper lake, again I had the whole area to myself. I had taken along some sparklers to mess around with during the blue hour and my 24mm f1.4 lens to grab as much starlight as I could. Kananaskis Lakes is an official 'dark sky' site so on a moonless night it is an incredible spectacle to be a part of, but that lack of light makes it challenging to shoot with any foreground. Fortunately the mountains now have a dusting of snow to reflect what light is available and the 24mm f1.4 has no trouble finding it. It was another wonderful evening in the company of those enormous star filled skies. The bitter cold was kept at bay by my winter gear leaving me the simple pleasure of sitting on a rock stargazing, and drinking hot tea, for quite some time.. There are no captions today, the sunset shots are at the lower lake and the rest at the upper. You can click the main shot for a larger version as it squeezes approximately 20 km of mountain range into one shot. It has been quite some time since we last saw our smaller pine squirrels 'scarface' and 'squeak in the garden. It seems both were run out of town by the influx of large greys into woodland behind the house. The greys came because their forest was bulldozed for construction of new homes along the ridge.
So it has been weeks since any of the tiny pine squirrels have been around, but at the weekend this little fella appeared on the feeder. The seed bell he is feeding on is a little less than 5 inches long (12.7cm) so (discounting his tail) that makes him about the same, hence the name. For comparison the greys are between 10 and 12 inches long (discounting the tail) What was hilarious was watching this tiny little thing chase multiple greys out of the garden all weekend long. He will stand on top of the feeder and proclaim his territory loudly and harass any other squirrel in the area. Pegleg, blackfeet and sooty have all felt the wrath of Titch this weekend, and each ended up running back to the safety of the forest. I suspect Titch will be sticking around, and it's nice to see another character join our ever growing band of rodents |
AuthorWe arrived in Calgary, Canada on 29th December 2011 to continue our journey. This blog is intended to keep our family and friends informed whilst we explore Canada.You can use the RSS feed below to stay updated. Categories
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