Portal Creek

One of my favorite places in the whole world is Portal Creek.  It is a small, non-descript little mountain stream in Jasper National Park.  It tumbles down from somewhere up around the Marmot Basin ski area, crosses secondary highway 93A, and eventually spills into the Athabasca River, upstream of the Jasper townsite.  In late fall in particular, which coincides with the annual Fall Photo Weekend, it is a spectacular place to be...  

This little stream spills its way down over a relatively steep descent, over a bunch of boulders, eventually making it's way to the floor of the Athabasca valley.  In the late fall, particularly with fresh snow, it is a sight to be seen.  The water, splashing up onto the rocks and any overhanging trees and limbs creates some spectacular ice formations.  Branches hanging into the stream become encrusted with ice bells.  Rocks in the stream become covered with ice toupees, capped by fresh snow.  I have photographed here numerous times before, and will continue to come back time and time again.

Most recently, Jon and Steve and I explored here when we were out in Jasper.  This was on Saturday November 14, on the 15th annual Fall Photo weekend.

Like previous years, I spent quite a bit of time here.  The sound of the water spilling over the boulders overwhelms everything else, and allows me to escape into a zone all of my own.  Everywhere I look there are compositions to be visually captured with my camera.  Overall wide views of the stream tumbling down, to tighter detail shots of the ice formations.   I NEVER tire of this place.  Here are a few digital snapshots that I took as I quickly explored with my digital camera.  I very quickly put this away in favor of my large format film camera, which I think I set up about a half dozen times.  I will share some of those images here on by blog as I get around to processing those negatives.  For now, here is a taste of this spectacular place....