What a difference a day makes. When we got up on Sunday morning there was 6 to 8 inches of fresh snow on the ground, and the temperature had dropped to around -15C. Quite a change from the +10C temperature we had enjoyed just a few hours earlier. After breakfast we packed up and bundled up and headed out of town.
In a meadow on the edge of town we came across a herd of elk. Mostly they were cows, the harem of a big mature bull. A slightly younger and smaller bull was challenging his reign, and we pulled over to the side of the road as the battle began. It was quite the spectacle, particularly for Tom who had recently moved to Canada from Ireland, and never seen anything like this before. I think that the larger bull was the same one we saw yesterday beside the Pyramid Lake Road, as this was very close to the same area, and his antlers appear to have the same tine pattern.
Eventually we headed up the Maligne Road. The snow was pretty deep and there were only a couple of tracks ahead of us on the road, in the fresh snow. Eventually we came upon a van that was stuck in the snow at the edge of the road. We stopped and helped to push him out before continuing along on our way.
Our first photo stop was along the Maligne River and the conditions here were just beautiful. We photographed here for a while before continuing further up the valley to Medicine Lake.
Conditions at Medicine Lake were not all that great. The clouds were very low in the valley, there was a lot of snow, and the water was still a little high. Not nearly as good as the conditons were when we shot here a year ago. On our way back down the road we came across a couple of Mule Deer in the fresh snow and managed a few snapshots. After that we carried on over to Horseshoe Lake on the Icefields Parkway. We shot for a while here as well before eventually calling it a day and heading back into town. Here are a few digital snapshots from some of the stops during the day.
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