Wildlife in the Canadian Rockies I

In the latter half of our time in Canada, we were fortunate to see a lot of wildlife, including some impressive large game that I will feature in a future blog entry. One animal, however, was a daily companion. Although I would call this cute creature a chipmunk, our guide to Canadian fauna called it a squirrel. In any case, they were everywhere, and they lacked all fear of humans, even crawling into our backpack during a brief stop atop Sentinel Pass.

Day Four: Mt. Rundle over Vermillion Lake

On Day 3 in the Canadian Rockies, Stephanie and I drove the Icefields Parkway north from Lake Louise to Jasper National Park. It was an enjoyable day that included walking on Athabasca Glacier, hiking around Mt. Edith Cavell, and staying in a lovely chalet outside of Jasper, Alberta. Unfortunately, it was also a gray, rainy day, and none of the pictures from our third day of vacation were particularly impressive. I did take some shots of memorable stops along the way, and I'll link to them eventually.

But for now, I'll jump ahead to Day 4, when we left Jasper and headed back to Banff National Park for two nights in the town of Banff itself. Day 4 included a bear sighting, a return trip to Moraine Lake, and some shots of Mt. Rundle and its reflection in Vermillion Lakes.

This particular shot of Mt. Rundle illustrates one of the most fascinating aspects of the Canadian Rockies- namely, that they are remarkably different from the American Rockies. Mt. Rundle and many other mountains near Banff show their youth- they look like a continental plate that has been driven upwards after colliding with another plate, which is precisely what they are. Because they are so young, their eastern faces remain smooth, having not yet had time to have been textured by erosion.

Stephanie and I spent a lot of time comparing these young mountains to the mountains we know best, the Appalachians of western North Carolina, which are one of the oldest mountain ranges on Earth. One of the striking things to us was how two ranges so different in appearance could both be so beautiful.

Day Two: Moraine Lake

We spent our second day in Banff National Park at stunning Moraine Lake, one of the most beautiful sites I've ever seen. After driving through some incredible mountain views en route from the village of Lake Louise, we started our exploration of Moraine Lake by taking a wonderful hike through Larch Valley and onto Sentinel Pass, one of the highest mountain passes accessible by trail in the Canadian Rockies.

After retracing our steps to the lake, we rented a canoe, like those shown in the picture, for a lovely paddle around this gorgeous lake. In addition to the shot that I've shown on this blog entry, I also took some shots providing unencumbered views of Moraine Lake.

Day One: Takakkaw Falls

After leaving Emerald Lake, Stephanie and I headed to Takakkaw Falls, officially Canada's highest unbroken waterfall (Vancouver Island's Della Falls is higher overall, but it's largest drop is broken by a rock ledge). The lower portion of Takakkaw Falls drops an impressive 830 vertical feet, producing a spray that will obscure camera lenses 200 yards away.

My understanding from photography classes and books is that protocol for American photographers is to use long exposures at waterfalls to produce silky, blended images. Unfortunately, to get that kind of an exposure without bleaching out your image, you need to use a very small aperture opening. The day we visited Takakkaw was bright enough that my long exposure images bleached out, even with my highest f-stop. In the future, I hope to artificially increase my aperture options with a neutral density filter. For now, I'm taking solace that, unlike the preferred U.S. convention, apparently Japanese photographers prefer crisper waterfall images. Consequently, we'll just pretend that this picture was intended to as a tribute to British Columbia's large Japanese immigrant population.

I also used my tripod and the delay feature on my camera to take a similar image with Stephanie and I in it.

Day One: Emerald Lake, Yoho National Park

The first destination for Stephanie and I after arriving in the Canadian Rockies was British Columbia's Yoho National Park. We started our day at Emerald Lake (after our planned stop at Takakkaw Falls was temporarily detoured by a rock slide). As you can see from this photo, photography was difficult our first day (as well as a few subsequent days) because of cloudy skies that obscured many mountain tops. However, for a few moments at least, those clouds added some intrigue to this view, and I captured a few shots before the mountains were fully hidden.

A few notes on Emerald Lake itself- high above the lake, one can find one of the most important fossil beds known to evolutionary biologists, the famous Burgess Shale. The fossils found there by Charles Doolittle Walcott tell the story of the Cambrian Explosion, a period of dramatic diversification of marine body plans. My interest in these fossils dates back to reading Stephen Jay Gould's A Wonderful Life as a college student, a book I'd recommend to all biologists interested in evolution and in good science writing.

Banff National Park, Canadian Rockies

After six great days in the Canadian Rockies, Stephanie and I are back in Calgary this evening, with a scheduled departure for the U.S.A. tomorrow morning.

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to post pictures from our trip. This picture may have been the best shot that I took all week. I took it last Friday morning, as Steph and I drove to Moraine Lake, above Lake Louise, Alberta. Our entire day at Moraine Lake was fantastic, and the view on our way there, captured here, was the first of many highlights.

Crepe myrtles in bloom

From February through August in North Carolina, you can pretty much determine the date by noting which trees are in bloom. It starts around Valentine's Day with a burst of pinks before the leaves are even on the trees. The white Bradford Pears soon follow, and after that, a procession of colors takes you all the way into June.

When summer first arrives, it seems as though the trees are done blossoming, and other than the rhododendrons in the mountains, North Carolina becomes mostly green. However, it's only a brief pause before the summer's grand finale- in late June, the magnificent crepe myrtles begin to explode with color.

I love crepe myrtles. Their pink, fuscia, and lavender blooms have amazed me each of the seven summers we've spent here. Unfortunately, I think that they are difficult to photograph. My pictures never seem to capture their magnificence. This shot is no exception, but it is the best shot I took out of about forty yesterday. This particular tree sits just up the road from our place, in a boulevard leading into our subdivision.

Starting tomorrow, "Lucky Shots" will probably go silent for about 10 days. Stephanie and I are headed to Canada for a vacation, and unless our modest accomodations have unexpected internet access, I won't be able to post any shots until we return. Once we're back, I'm sure that the next several weeks worth of entries will be devoted to the shots we take up there.

-N

Raleigh hydrangeas with flash

This is the same shot that I posted yesterday, except that I used a fill flash here rather than just taking advantage of the ambient lighting. I'm curious as to whether visitors like this shot or the original one better.

One caveat to this vote- how you see the pictures will certainly be dependent on your monitor. As a result, there are two variables- personal preference and monitor settings.