Ice Bubbles at Abraham Lake

On Sunday, Hailey and I took a drive out to Abraham Lake.  Margarit and the other two girls decided to stay home.  Hailey and I hit the road about 9:00AM and after a quick stop for fuel and a coffee, we were on our way.  The temperature was mild, which was quite a relief after the cold snap we've just endured for the last couple of weeks.  The drive was fairly uneventful, but we did see a big bald eagle dining on a moose carcass beside the highway.  We arrived in Nordegg just around noon and decided to drive up to our lot and have a look around.  It was pretty snowy, with about a foot of snow on the ground.  The roads had been plowed and access was good, but without a cabin, there wasn't much to hang around for.  We continued further west up to Abraham Lake.

Abraham Lake, and the surrounding Kootenay Plains are known for remaining relatively snow free in winter.  This is mostly because of the incessant wind.  There is a reason that nearby Windy Point got its name.  I think that any snow that actually falls here ends up blown into Saskatchewan.  Its great wildlife habitat as the large animals can feed relatively easily on the snow free plains.  There is also a lot of naturally occurring methane gas in the like, which is evidenced by all the bubbles that form in the ice.  This phenomenon of ice bubbles probably occurs in a lot of other lakes, but because here the wind keeps the lake clear, the bubbles are highly visible.  In fact on this day, a person probably could have skated the length of the lake as there was virtually no snow on the ice.  Quite the sharp contrast to the foot of snow in Nordegg, a short 30km away.

Our first stop was at Windy Point.  True to its name, it was very windy.  Access down the steep slopes to the lake looked challenging, and the wind was somewhat off-putting.  We had a look around and then continued on further west.  We stopped at Preachers Point, where we could drive right up to the edge of the lake.  At lot of other people had the same thought and there were numerous cars here and lots of people wandering around.  This spot is right at the upper end of the lake, but because this is a man-made reservoir, the water level had declined since back in September, when we passed through after the Assiniboine trip and saw the lake full to the brim.  The shoreline was now encased in sloped sheets of ice that had dropped into this position as the water level declined.  We picked our way onto the ice and carefully wandered around.  I brought out the big view camera and managed a couple of shots, but even here it was very windy.  Despite the mild temperature the winds made it quite bitter and I had to be careful that the camera was not blown over.  In short order my hands were nearly frozen and once I had taken a couple of shots I retreated to the truck to warm up. 

Most of the tourists that were out exploring the lake were Asian.  I know that the mountains and the national parks are popular with Asian tourists but it was rather unusual to see them at this time of year, and in such numbers.  Entire families of young and old were out wandering around on the ice.  Almost all of them had cameras, but I only noticed one or two other tripods so obviously most were not serious photographers.  Unfortunately they seemed oblivious to what I was doing and were very self absorbed.  They wandered in front of me on several occasions during the day as I was trying to photograph and I had to continually wait for them to get out of my shot.

After this stop Hailey and I returned back east up the lake and made a second stop on the lake shore, opposite Mount Michener.  This spot was also popular with tourists and photographers, again many of them Asian.  I shot here for a while too, before we eventually moved on.  By this time it was getting to be fairly late in the day.  We made a quick side trip up the Crescent Falls road and stopped at the Bighorn Canyon overview.  We got a look at a male ruffed grouse right beside the road.  I didn't have great tires on my truck so I decided against driving all the way in to the falls as the road here was still pretty snowy and hadn't been plowed for a while.

During the day we say one small herd of wild horses and evidence that they had been grazing all over the valley.  It was nice to see that they were even grazing in the subdivision near our property.  On the way back towards Rocky Mountain House we stopped a couple times to photographs groups of wild horses that we saw.  Just as the sun was going down we saw a great grey owl on a utility pole along the highway but that was our last wildlife encounter of the day.  We stopped for something to eat in Rocky Mountain House and then hit the road for home, arriving back in the city just a little after 9:00PM.  A whirlwind 12 hours but a great day all the same.