An Afternoon Drive

On Thursday October 2nd, Margarit and I took an afternoon drive from the cottage, west on the David Thompson Highway, up to Abraham Lake.  The two of us were spending a few days in Nordegg, with Hank.  The kids all stayed behind in the city.  

We started out at the Landslide Lake Trailhead.  I wanted to show Margarit the First Nations site with all the prayer flags and the sweat lodge.  I had been here earlier in the summer, but this was her first time seeing it.  We found an aspen tree right near the parking lot with an old bear scrape on it.  And along the trail we found a fresh bear dump, full of Bearberries.  We didn't see any bears though.

It was a pleaseant enough day when we left Nordegg, but the further up the North Saskatchewan Valley that we headed, the cloudier and windier it got.  It felt like what it was... a cool fall day, even though the temperature wasn't all that bad.  I think it peaked at around +19 but for most of the day it was closer to around +15c.

We made a couple of stops along the shore of Abraham Lake... the first at Preachers Point and the second at Abraham Slabs.  The reservoir is really high right now, with the water right up into the trees.  With the minimal rain we've experienced in the past month, and not much waterflow on the incoming streams, this is probably as high as it is going to get.  Over the winter months the water will be slowly released to generate power, and in the spring, with the reservoir almost empty, the cycle will repeat.

I took along both my 4x5 and my 8x10 view camera and took a number of photographs of the flooded trees.  The long suffering Mrs. Pohl was very patient through it all and put up with my continued nonsense.