Fall Photo Weekend

This past weekend was the annual Fall Photo Weekend.  I have attended every single one of these photo outings since my friend Jon and I started the tradition about 15 years ago.  Unfortunately Jon was not able to join in this time around.  Five members of the Monochrome Guild headed out to Jasper for a weekend of photography.  This included Arda, Court, Rob M., Tanja and myself.  We met up with local Jasper photographer Ron Brown.  Ron has lived in Jasper for many years and knows the area very well.  We were counting on his expertise to get us out to some new areas. 

I booked Friday November 2nd off from work and headed out of town early in the morning.  There was a fair bit of fresh snow as I entered the foothills, particularly at the Obed summit.  I met up with Rob and Ron just inside the park gate.  Rob had just spent the last three weeks shooting out at Vancouver Island, and was meeting up with us on his way back home.  We spent a few hours exploring and photographing along a small forested stream in the Athabasca valley.  It was heavily overcast with not much direct sun, so we were forced to turn our attention to small detail shots.  Later in the day Arda, Court and Tanja arrived and met up with us.  By mid-afternoon we decided to take a drive up the Maligne Road and did some shooting at Medicine Lake.  As the sun went down in the late afternoon we checked into our hotel rooms, and went out for an evening dinner.

The next morning we were up early.  After breakfast we headed south on the Icefields Parkway.  We made a brief stop at the Mount Christie viewpoint and then carried on to Beauty Creek.  Once again it was heavily overcast.  It was quite warm... up around +5C by afternoon, but there was several inches of wet snow on the ground, and it rained off and on.  We hiked up Beauty Creek to Stanley Falls and spent most of the day shooting here.  In places the canyon is quite narrow and deep and we had to be careful about our footing in the wet and slippery snow.  There were no tracks so obviously no other hikers had been in the area for a while.  The creek was still flowing reasonably well and there were a lot of interesting ice formations where it spilled over a series of small waterfalls and through some rapids.  Stanley Falls itself was difficult to photograph as it was obscured by trees from above, and the snowy slope was too steep and slippery to safely get down.  By evening we headed back to town and again went out for dinner.  Ron joined us again, and this time his wife came along as well.  They have just sold their home in Jasper and will be travelling to the south pacific for three months before eventually retiring out to Vancouver Island.  It was great that we had the chance to connect with Ron and get out shooting together before he moves away.

Sunday morning we again got up early and drove over to Old Fort Point.  We hiked up the ridge to the overview above the Athabasca valley.  The stairs and the trail were fairly treacherous with all the packed snow turning to ice.  I was surpised that we found some fresh bear tracks up on the ridge... probably a Grizzly judging by the size and the claws.  I would have expected that they had bedded down for their long winter nap by this time.  There was not much of an opportunity for photographs as the skies remained fairly overcast again.  We all attempted a couple of shots of the valley and of Pyramid Mountain, but nothing exceptional.  We eventually packed up and headed back down to begin the drive back home.  We had hoped to stop at a few places along the way and shoot our way out of the park, but the wind picked up, the clouds settled in and it began to rain.  We stopped a couple of times and checked things out but weather conditions just did not allow for any shooting.

The entire weekend I was so focused on large format shooting that my little point and shoot digital camera just never found it's way out of the truck.  So I have no snapshots to post and share on my blog.  I guess I will have to wait until I get around to processing some of the film that I shot, before I will be able to share them.  It was a successful weekend and I ended up coming home with nearly 30 exposed sheets of black and white film, as well as a few color shots.

It rained heavily most of the way home.  In places there was significant accumulations of nearly a foot of snow in the ditches, with the trees all covered, yet the rain was pouring down heavily.  Fortunately we were on the road early enough in the day that the rain didn't freeze.  But the temperature was dropping down to near zero by mid-afternoon and I'm sure the roads would have been really dangerous by later that evening.