Spring Photo Weekend

Much like the fall trip, the Monochrome Guild often goes on a spring photo outing.  This event has not been going on for as long, or as regularly as the fall one, but in recent years we have tried to get out annually.  This time around we decided to stay in Harvie Heights, just outside the Banff Park Boundary, near Canmore.  This gave us the option of shooting in the National Parks, or heading south into Kananaskis Country.

I have decided that this year I will lighten my work load a little and take every other Friday off.  I hired at part time office assistant to allow me the freedom to do this.  Friday April 24th was my first scheduled Friday off, and it coincided with the Spring Photo Weekend.  There were four members of the Guild that headed out on Friday morning...  Peter, Mark, Court and myself.  My oldest daughter Hailey, always anxious to miss a day of school, decided to join us.

We got an early start and found ourselves down in the mountains before lunch.  We decided to head into Banff National Park and took a drive down the Bow Valley Parkway.  Perhaps I have just been here too many times before but we really didn't find anything worth shooting.  A brief stop at the Bow River near Castle Junction yielded these two shots...  an Osprey sitting on a nest, and a detail shot of Castle Mountain....

We decided to continue from here over to Yoho National Park, over the border in British Columbia.  As we drove over Kicking Horse Pass the clouds had really settled in and it was snowing heavily.  It looked as though we wouldn't be able to do any serious shooting on this day.  As we dropped down out of the high country, passed the town of Field, and reached our destination along the Kicking Horse River, by the Natural Bridge, it had lightened a little.  We wandered around for a while trying to decide if we could bring the cameras out.  But, a short time later the weather broke and we actually had a great afternoon here.  I shot about 15 sheets of film with my 4x5, all the while trying to teach Hailey how to shoot with my medium format Hasselblad.  It took her a while to adjust to a camera that did not have auto-focus, did not have auto-exposure, and did not have a zoom lens.  She quickly learned that zooming in and out meant changing lenses or moving the camera.  Focus had to be carefully checked with the magnifier of the waist level finder, and exposure determined with a hand held meter, with the reading adjusted to compensate for any filters being used.  I must say the she caught on quite quickly and by the end of the weekend was shooting, mostly on her own, and had rattled off about six rolls of film.  Here is a digital snapshop of the waterfall just above the Natural Bridge.  There was a moose carcass in the shallows of the river just upstream of this spot and we were all a little cautious just in case there were any bears around.  We didn't see any but Mark saw a fresh cougar track in the snow.

After we finished up shooting here we headed back towards Banff.  We made a stop along the Vermilion Lakes, just outside of the Banff townsite.  The clouds were really cool and there was a great spindrift off the rim of Mount Rundle.  It didn't last very long and we only managed a few snapshots of it.  Later we headed into Banff for our evening meal.  In my opinion the best Prime Rib I've ever had is at Bumpers Beef House.  I have been going to this reastaurant every time I am in Banff, for at least 25 years.  It recently was sold to new owners and the original location is closed.  We went to the new one, and the menu was still mostly the same, and they still had a salad bar.  The food was pretty good still, but the atmosphere was just not the same.....

Saturday morning dawned clear and cold and we headed out after breakfast, south into Kananskis Country.  I had a bit of a migraine headache and was feeling somewhat unmotivated.  We drove down the Smith-Dorrien Trail, past Goat Pond and Spray Reservoir.  The water level was really low... lower than I have ever seen before.  But, the mountain runoff hasn't started yet, so hopefully everything fills up in the coming weeks.  As we continued on into Peter Lougheed Provincial Park it warmed up nicely and we made a stop to photograph some flooded tree trunks.  After this stop we headed back up Highway 40 to the Trans Canada, and back to our suite in Harvie Heights.  I had a nap for an hour and finally managed to shake off the headache that had been nagging me all day.  We went out for an early dinner in Canmore to a great Pizza place.  After dinner we headed back into Banff National Park and did some shooting in the evening light, at Bow Falls and then back out at Vermillion Lakes.

The next morning again dawned clear and sunny and this turned out to be the best weather day of the weekend.  Why does that always happen on the day that we have to go home...???  We headed up onto the Minnewanka Road in Banff National Park and did some shooting up at Two Jack Lake.  I was hoping that we could head over to Bankhead, but that section of the loop road is closed for the winter as a wildlife corridor.  After finishing up here we checked out Norquay Meadowns, and made another stop down at Vermillion Lakes, this time at the stumps of the old Beaver Pond.  We made a stop for lunch in Banff and then hit the road for home.  We decided to take the old highway 1A back to Calgary and made a stop at the historic church at Morley.  Like every spring that I have made a stop here, the Prairie Crocus's were in bloom everywhere.  By the time we finished up here it was getting to be late afternoon and we hit the road for home, eventually getting back to Edmonton by about 8:00PM.