Fall Photo Weekend - Day 3

The third day of the Fall Photo Weekend began with a repeat performance of Day 2.  We were up early and had breakfast at the hotel restaurant.  As soon as that was behind us, we hit the road for another day of adventure and photography.

It was very cold first thing in the morning, and there was a dusting of fresh snow.  It takes quite a while for the sun to get up over the peaks, and shine some light down into the valleys.  The cold air from overnight seems to settle in the valleys as well.  By afternoon it became really mild and pleasant but the cold mornings are always a little painful for the fingers while taking the first photographs of the day.  We headed out on the Maligne Road, which runs generally south from the townsite, and there is a significant gain in altitude all the way up to Maligne Lake.

The road follows the Maligne River to Medicine Lake.  There it skirts the shore of the lake for several miles, and then follows the river again to Maligne Lake.  Medicine Lake is very interesting, and a favorite location of mine.  The lake was formed in ancient times when a rock slide off of the adjacent Colin Range dammed the Maligne River.  In summer months there is enough water flow into the valley, that a lake forms behind the natural dam.  But by fall, when water flow declines, the lake slowly drains away through the rock and becomes an almost empty lake bed laced with channels and strewn with boulders.  If you go down to the edge of the lake, right by the rocks, you can actually hear the water draining in several places and it sounds like a bathtub draining.

We shot at the lake for most of the day, including a stop along the lakeshore where we shot the backlit channels down in the lake bed.  We briefly drove further up towards Maligne Lake.  I made a stop along the river where I had shot a few times before.  On two occasions in the past, shortly after setting up my big view camera, a pair of moose walked out into the river and posed for me.  I set up the camera again this time, hoping for the hat trick, but there were no moose to be seen.  Some of the others in the group continued on up to Maligne Lake but I returned to Medicine Lake and spent the remainder of the afternoon shooting there.

As the day came to an end we returned to the townsite.  We walked over to Earls Restaurant and had a great dinner and then later returned to the suites and visited for a while before eventually turning in.  Another great day spent in the mountains and there would still be one more to go.