Fall Photo Weekend - Day 1

The gang from the Monochrome Guild headed out for our annual Fall Photo Weekend.  This time we headed back to Jasper National Park, our most common destination over the past 20 years.  We actually left the city on Friday November 8th, but that was in the afternoon and was essentially just a driving day.  We arrived in time to check into our hotel rooms and settle in for the evening.  The first real day of doing any shooting was Saturday November 9th.

Steve and Meghan rode along with me in my truck.  Gord, Gabor and Court drove out separately.  Arda would meet us later on Saturday evening.  And then there were seven....

The forecast back in Edmonton was not great and I understand that it snowed quite a bit there.  In Jasper we had heavy rain on Friday night, but no snow.  The rain somewhat dried off before the temperature dropped but some places were fairly icy.  We got blowing snow on Saturday evening, but nothing that affected our shooting for the day.

Court and Gabor did some exploring along the old secondary highway #93A and eventually ended up over at Athabasca Falls.  Steve stayed in town and wandered about the townsite with his rangefinder camera.  Gord, Meghan and I also headed up onto Highway 93A.  We stopped at Portal Creek, a favorite location of mine, and shot for two or three hours.  The creek cascades down the mountian and at this point in the season there is a buildup of ice on the rocks that is always different and always visually interesting.  A couple years ago it was -20C when we were out here.  This time around it was only about -6C.  But it is always very humid by the open water so it still felt cold.  The skies were heavily overcast and on this day the light was very flat and dull.  We shot for a while and then eventually moved on further down the road.  We checked out the Astoria and Whirlpool Rivers but didn't end up taking out the cameras.  The road was gated and closed for the season at Whirlpool so we had to turn back and return the way we came.

The days are very short in the mountains at this time of year so we would not have a lot of opportunity to head anywhere else.  It was about 2:00 when we headed over the the confluence of the Maligne and Athabasca Rivers at the Sixth Bridge.  By this point it started snowing and the wind was getting fairly brisk.  We didn't end up shooting anything here either, and made our way back to town.  We stopped along the highway near the Jasper townsite and there was a large herd of elk right near the road.  They were pretty settled in and relaxed and we managed to get a few large format shots of a majestic bull and some cows.  After that we headed into town, had a few drinks at our hotel, and then eventually did the five block walk into town to a restaurant.  Arda had driven out later from Edmonton and met us there for dinner.
After dinner we walked back to the hotel and visited for a while.  All of us were pretty tired from being outside most of the day in the cold so none of us ended up staying up all that late.  I think we were probably all in bed by 10:30 or so.