Helen Lake on the Icefields Parkway

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This Saturday we drove around 30km north on the Icefields Parkway (Hwy. 93) toward Jasper to the Helen Lake trailhead. The trail heads around the mountain up into an alpine meadow to Helen Lake. We continued on up over the ridge to get a view of Katherine Lake & Dolomite Pass; however, as we made it to the top of the ridge a storm blew in causing us to turn back earlier than planned.

Before I put away my camera, we saw several Marmots, some of whom were doing what looked to be wrestling: They stood up on their hind legs, did some sparring, then they would pull some form of shoulder throw before rolling around some more. They were very entertaining.

Here are some photos from the hike:

Backpacking to Mount Assiniboine

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For the August long weekend, our family and the Kent’s embarked on a five day hike to explore the area surrounding Mount Assiniboine. Our route started at Sunshine in Banff National Park, led us through into Assiniboine Provincial Park to Lake Magog, then we trekked through Wonder Pass down into the Kananaskis & Spray Lakes Provincial Park. We finished at Mount Shark, covering a distance of approximately 55km.

More details to follow; however here are the photos:

Burstall Pass Trailhead

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A few weeks ago we got up well before the break of dawn and drove down the Smith-Dorrien highway about 40 minutes to the Burstall Pass trailhead. We waited there to see if the sunrise would light up the sky. Alas, the clouds blocked most of the morning light, but there were a few OK photos that resulted:

Post-processing was done using Lightroom 2 & Photoshop CS5.

Check out Simon’s photos for a few more!

Canto Ostinato

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A few weeks back we saw a performance at Calgary’s High Performance Rodeo of Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, played on pianos and accompanied by Alberta Ballet – it was an amazing show, but the Tubular Bells was only the second act of the performance.

The first act was a four-piano performance of Canto Ostinato composed by Simeon Ten Holt; if you enjoy piano music, you should check it out it’s a very cool composition!

Weekend Project: Snow-Reports.ca

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A few years ago, I started tracking snowfall at ski resorts so I could see the snowfall trends. It never really got past a bunch of numbers stored in a database; but after waking-up a few mornings in late-November and trying to check a bunch of different websites to see where the snow fell overnight, I decided to resume this little project.

Since early December, I’ve been working on a project to put all the snowfall data from the Rockies (and other select resorts in Western Canada) into one place. The result: Rockies-Insider.com (Since renamed to snow-reports.ca)

It’s a work-in-progress, but hopefully some people find it useful!

Cheers,

Mike

Weekend in Fernie

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The Griz turned on the snow at Fernie this past week, and we decided to take a trip down to check out the conditions! The snow was very wet as the temperature hovered within +/- 2 degrees of freezing on Saturday; however, the snow up top was still relatively dry and light. We didn’t take many photos Saturday for fear of getting our camera gear soaking wet, but Sunday we managed to capture a few. Enjoy!

Be sure to check out Simon’s blog as well for some more great shots!

Thanksgiving Weekend in the Mountains

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This Thanksgiving weekend, we took a drive into the mountains to enjoy the crisp mountain air, and breath-taking scenery blanketed in the first snow of the fall.

We drove through Banff National Park up the Icefields Parkway toward Bow Glacier, Bow Summit and Peyto Lake. There was a black bear just off the highway between Bow Glacier and the Peyto Lake turn-off, but we didn’t catch any photos of it before it decided to retire into the forest once again.

Finally, we drove back along the Bow Valley Parkway to catch a glimpse of Castle Mountain. Enjoy!