Robert S. Pohl ... : 14th Annual Fall Photo Weekend

The Monochrome Guild have been going on a photo trip every fall for 14 years in a row. As founder and leader of the Guild I always organize these outings and have been on every single one. Like most of the past trips, we returned to Jasper this year. This time it was a pretty good sized group with eight of us going along. This included some long term guild members, and a few new ones. Margarit came along with me this time as she is starting to get back into photography again. Now that our three girls are getting a little older we can actually leave them at home and get away for events such as this. This time the girls stayed behind and spent a weekend with their Oma... my Mom.

The eight of us left the city early on Saturday morning, in two vehicles. The gang included Margarit and myself, as well as Guild members Court, Arda, Peter and Mark. Two new members, Tom and Andrea, also came along. Half the crowd headed home on Monday, while four, including myself, Court, Peter and Mark, stayed for an extra day.

When we got up on Saturday morning it has snowed and there was about 1-1/2 inches of the stuff on the ground. Margarit and I, along with Mark, Peter and Andrea met up at our house and travelled together in my truck. The others met seperately and were driving in Arda's vehicle. As we headed west it warmed up a little and the snow turned to rain. It rained all the way to Edson, at times fairly heavily. By the time we drove up and over the Obed summit, and started heading down into Hinton, the rain had quit and the sky was beginning to break up. We rolled through the National Park gates at about 11:30AM and continued into the park. Our first stop was at the dunes along Jasper Lake. Like usual it was fairly windy here, but the rain had stopped and the temperature was relatively mild. In fact by mid afternoon the temperature got up to around +10C. It didn't feel quite that warm though as there was a wind all day long, and the sun never came out. There was no snow on the ground, only up at higher elevations. We photographed in the dunes and along the shore of the lake for a while before continuing on down the road. We rolled into town in the mid afternoon and decided to head up the Pyramid Lake road onto the bench above the townsite. We wandered around a bit at Pyramid Island, and then stopped to photograph an aspen grove in the late afternoon light. After that we headed back down into town, checked into our hotel rooms, and met up with Arda, Tom and Court. We walked from the hotel into town and went out for an evening dinner. After dinner we hung around the room and had a few beers, and some scotch... or as Court referred to it, bronze wine.

What a difference a day makes... It turned cold over night and when we woke up in the morning there was over 6 inches of fresh snow on the ground. After having breakfast in our rooms and packing up our gear for the day, we headed out. We decided to drive up the Maligne Road to Medicine Lake. Just as we were leaving the townsite we came across a herd of elk in a roadside meadow. Two large bulls were challenging each other and we stopped to watch the battle and to take a few photographs. A short time later we continued on. It was heavily overcast and the light very flat, but the landscape was beautiful with the fresh snow all over the trees. As the cold temperatures had just hit, all the ponds, lakes and streams still had open water. Our first stop was at a picnic site along the Maligne River. It was simply beautiful here and we all spent a couple of hours taking photographs. Later we continued on up to Medicine Lake. The cloud cover was very low, and there was no view down the valley. The light was quite flat, and there was a heavy covering of snow on all the boulders. It seemed as though the water level in the lake was somewhat higher than it has been on past trips, at around the same point in the season.

Medicine Lake is very interesting.... The lake was created when a landslide came down off the Colin Range to the east, and dammed the valley of the Maligne River. The rockfall that dammed the valley consisted mostly of large rocks and boulders, and created a somewhat porous dam. During the spring and summer months, when the snowmelt occurs and the contributing creeks and the river are flowing at a high volume, the rocky dam blocks water flow sufficiently to create Medicine Lake, which extends for several miles up the valley. Then through the late summer and fall as the volume of waterflow declines, the lake slowly drains away leaving a largely empty lakebed with just a channel of water running down the middle. At the end of the lake, by the boulder dam, it is very picturesque by early winter with many for the boulders sticking up out of the shallow pools of remaining water. It is even better with fresh snow, as we had this time, but the skies and the light did not cooperate. If you clamber down over all the boulders to the edge of the water you can actually see where the lake drains away and hear a sound much like the draining of a bathtub.

After we finished up shooting at Medicine Lake we decided to head over to Horseshoe Lake. This was about an hour away, back towards the townsite and then down the Icefields Parkway. By the time we arrived at Horseshoe it was mid-afternoon and we only had a couple of hours before the light would fade. The wind picked up a little, and it was very humid beside the waters of the open lake. We spent some time photographing here before packing up for the day and heading back to town.

Once again we unpacked our gear and then walked into town to one of the local restaurants. After dinner we sat around again and visited. Arda and Tom put a sizable dent into a bottle of fine rum that they had purchased. I stuck to having a couple of beers, as I knew what would happen if I got into the rum. The next morning the two guys were more than a little groggy.

When we got up on Monday morning the snow had mostly stopped coming down, but it had become colder. We slept in a bit and eventually got rolling by about 10:00AM. We headed over to nearby Portal Creek, near the Marmot Basin Road. This is a beautiful mountain stream the tumbles and cascades down over a lot of medium and large rocks. With the onset of colder temperatures we expected that ice would be starting to form on the rocks. When we arrived we were not disappointed as there was beautiful fresh snow all over everything, the creek was still flowing, there were ice formations all over the rocks as well as on logs and overhanging branches, and the sun was breaking out. We spent a couple of hours photographing here. By about lunch time, half of the gang had to hit the road for home. Arda, Tom, Margarit and Andrea headed for home. I understand that they made a brief stop at the old cement plant at Marlboro, and eventually got back to Edmonton at about 7:00PM. Court, Peter, Mark and myself kept shooting at Portal Creek for a little longer, and then made a couple of stops along the Icefields Parkway. The first was at the bridge over the Athabasca River. The ice bloom was beginning on the river, and there was a beautiful view of Pyramid Mountain in the afternoon light, partially shrouded with clouds. It was very cold and windy here and we were chilled to the bone before we finished shooting. After that we continued back towards Jasper and made a stop at the Miette River. At first the light was beautiful but as we set up and started shooting here, the clouds rolled in and the light disappeared. After we wrapped up here we made a quick run back up the Pyramid Lake Road and shot Pyramid Mountain in the last of the afternoon light. We headed back to the hotel after that, with the four of us now relocated into just one of the two suites that we had rented. As we walked back to the hotel from the restaurant that night the sky had cleared right off and the temperature was noticeably dropping.

When we awoke the next morning it was very cold, having dropped down to about -25C overnight. We packed all of our gear into the truck, which was a bit of a challenge as the rolling cover on the box of the truck had frozen shut. But we eventually got all the gear stuffed in underneath and checked out of the hotel. We headed back up the Pyramid Lake Road, wanting to capture the scene in morning light. Our first stop was up at Patricia Lake, where we had shot the night before. The light on Pyramid Mountain was a little more direct and flatter then it had been the evening before, but with the cold temperature there was a mist coming off the lake, and ice starting to form at the edges. It was very uncomfortable photographing in the -19C temperature. The knobs and controls on my view camera are all rather small, and operating the camera, attaching lenses, setting the shutter speed and aperture, are all operations that can not be done with gloves on. And, as most of the components are metal, it is not long outside before fingers are becoming cold and frozen. After the stop at Patricia Lake we continued up the road to Pyramid Lake and shot more of the same sort of conditions. There must have been a breeze up here overnight as the mist seems to have been blown up off of the lake and into the trees and there was a heavy hoar frost, as well as some cool ice formations on the shore. When we finished up here we headed back down into the valley and made a brief stop along the Athabasca River. Court needed to make a brief conference call for work and we wanted to be in an area where we knew there was cell phone coverage. While he was on the phone, the rest of us went for a walk along the river. Nothing really caught our eyes photographically so the cameras never came out here. After Court finished up his call we hit the road in the general direction of home. We made one stop out near the park gate to photograph the Athabasca Valley, and then left Jasper National Park. On the way home we also made a brief side trip into Marlboro to check out the old cement plant. After that we just pounded the pavement for home, and arrived back in the city about 6:30PM. By the time we unpacked everything and got everyone dropped off and unloaded, it was nearly 8:00PM.

I've attached a few snap shots that I took with my phone up on the Pyramid Lake Road on the last day of the trip. Over the coming days I will download all the other snapshots that I took with my Nikon D810 digital and post those to my blog. Then, in the coming weeks as I begin to process some of my film, I will also scan and post those. Stay tuned...

"Ice Tarantula" - Pyramid Lake shore