Bad photographer
Last weekend, Col and I went on an avalanche awareness course in Jasper. The intended goal was to get a little more familiar with our avalanche safety gear and get a better working knowledge of how to judge slopes, what to look for in the snowpack and how to run an efficient beacon search. What we came away with was considerably better and more detailed than that and as an added bonus we got to tour up into the Bald Hills above Maligne Lake again to dig some snow pits and run some rescue simulations. Of course this all provides wonderful photo opportunities, shots of the layers of snow, shots of people up to their heads in a pit in the snow, shots of snow flying from the shovels, shots of solid columns of snow cut out of the snowpack and general nature shots. And how many photos do you think I actually managed to take during the course itself? None. That's why I'm a bad photographer - I get too focussed in on enjoying things and don't really remember that I've brought a camera along with me to capture any of it for posterity.
It was in this frame of mind on the way home that I realised that it wasn't all bad - sure I'd forgotten during the day but how about on the way home? Surely there's some stuff that's interesting there? Well, Jasper National Park is one of the most spectacular natural areas I've ever had the fortune of taking for granted and with a camera at the ready on the way out I got a few of the sights that I have started to just dismiss and mundane, run of the mill and just plain scenery. Looked at through the lense though they take on a new magnificence and I hope I can maintain that new perspective for a little while longer.
Medicine Lake is on the way back from Maligne Lake
And from the Parks Canada website, here's a little something that I never knew before, having driven past this lake dozens of times in the last few years. Talk about new perspectives!
Summer visitors assume that Medicine is a normal mountain lake, but it isn't.
During the summer, glacier melt waters flood the lake, sometimes overflowing it. In fall and winter the lake disappears, becoming a mudflat with scattered pools of water connected by a stream. But there is no visible channel draining the lake – so where then does the water go?
The answer is, "out the bottom", like a bathtub without a plug. The Maligne River pours into the lake from the south and drains out through sinkholes in the bottom. The water then streams through a cave system formed in the slightly soluble limestone rock, surfacing again in the area of Maligne Canyon 16 kilometers downstream. This is one of the largest known sinking rivers in the Western Hemisphere and may be the largest inaccessible cave system anywhere in the world!
Summer melt water coming into the lake exceeds the capacity of the sinkholes to drain it. Decreased melt water in the late summer and fall means that the lake's sinkholes can drain the lake faster then the Maligne River can fill it. This creates the disappearing lake phenomena. Aboriginal peoples called the lake Medicine because of its seemingly magical powers, and the United Nations created the Rocky Mountain Parks World Heritage Site partly because of this unique drainage system.
Bighorn sheep licking the salt off the highway
The road out of the Park - fairly mundane? I think not!
The last significant peak on the way out - catching the setting sun
It took some crazy geology to make this mountain look like this
Sometimes the best images are the ones you're leaving behind
And sometimes you just need to put the camera away before you get too silly
Sorry that there's some blurry stuff in there, but these were all taken from a moving car through a not very clean windshield. And you should see the ones that I didn't put up here!
We are looking forward to a few more trips to Jasper this season so hopefully I'll be able to keep some of the magic of the trip home alive while we're actually there - and become a better photographer and remember to take the camera out and use it.
It was in this frame of mind on the way home that I realised that it wasn't all bad - sure I'd forgotten during the day but how about on the way home? Surely there's some stuff that's interesting there? Well, Jasper National Park is one of the most spectacular natural areas I've ever had the fortune of taking for granted and with a camera at the ready on the way out I got a few of the sights that I have started to just dismiss and mundane, run of the mill and just plain scenery. Looked at through the lense though they take on a new magnificence and I hope I can maintain that new perspective for a little while longer.
Medicine Lake is on the way back from Maligne Lake
And from the Parks Canada website, here's a little something that I never knew before, having driven past this lake dozens of times in the last few years. Talk about new perspectives!
Summer visitors assume that Medicine is a normal mountain lake, but it isn't.
During the summer, glacier melt waters flood the lake, sometimes overflowing it. In fall and winter the lake disappears, becoming a mudflat with scattered pools of water connected by a stream. But there is no visible channel draining the lake – so where then does the water go?
The answer is, "out the bottom", like a bathtub without a plug. The Maligne River pours into the lake from the south and drains out through sinkholes in the bottom. The water then streams through a cave system formed in the slightly soluble limestone rock, surfacing again in the area of Maligne Canyon 16 kilometers downstream. This is one of the largest known sinking rivers in the Western Hemisphere and may be the largest inaccessible cave system anywhere in the world!
Summer melt water coming into the lake exceeds the capacity of the sinkholes to drain it. Decreased melt water in the late summer and fall means that the lake's sinkholes can drain the lake faster then the Maligne River can fill it. This creates the disappearing lake phenomena. Aboriginal peoples called the lake Medicine because of its seemingly magical powers, and the United Nations created the Rocky Mountain Parks World Heritage Site partly because of this unique drainage system.
Bighorn sheep licking the salt off the highway
The road out of the Park - fairly mundane? I think not!
The last significant peak on the way out - catching the setting sun
It took some crazy geology to make this mountain look like this
Sometimes the best images are the ones you're leaving behind
And sometimes you just need to put the camera away before you get too silly
Sorry that there's some blurry stuff in there, but these were all taken from a moving car through a not very clean windshield. And you should see the ones that I didn't put up here!
We are looking forward to a few more trips to Jasper this season so hopefully I'll be able to keep some of the magic of the trip home alive while we're actually there - and become a better photographer and remember to take the camera out and use it.
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