The wind picks up soil from the windward side of this hill, and deposits it here, on the leeward side. It also creates these fantastic swirls on the snow here at the edge of the ice. Taken beside Abraham Lake.
Dirty Snow
Category: Mountain
Ode to Ice
Oh cracked ice, will I ever get tired of you? (I’ll post something NOT Abraham Lake or ice related tomorrow—promise)
Preacher’s Point Afternoon
On Abraham Lake it’s easy to get sucked into the details—there’s so many fascinating ice patterns, but every once in a while I’d look up and see something like this.
Abraham Lake Trip: Sleeping in the Car
I’ve seen plenty of photos of the lake in winter before. The first photos I saw were on Darwin Wiggett’s blog. He takes groups of photographers out on the lake, so it’s starting to be a pretty popular place for photography. And with good reason—the ice patterns are incredible, the snow is either non-existant or drifted due to very strong winds.
About a week before I left, I looked at the forecast and saw positive temperatures. This is crazy for Alberta in January, so I figured I should take advantage of it. I had a few days off in the middle of the week, so I left Tuesday morning, arrived late in the afternoon, and parked beside the lake at the first semi-secluded place I found. I was sheltered from the winds (or so I thought) and had pretty good access to the lake. So I set out down the bank. The last section was steep ice—I would have been stuck without the crampons I’d purchased the day before. I got down to the lake and hiked (gingerly at first) out to a point of land. I was cautious about the thickness of the ice, but it turned out to be frozen several feet down.
The ice at the edge of the lake on the way up to my car.
I had a lovely evening on the lake, and after it got dark, I headed back to the car for night. I’ve set up my car for sleeping quite comfortably. The back seat folds down completely flat, I have my camping mattress on that and even a memory foam topper to add that extra bit of luxury. The temperature that night only went down to -7, which is quite pleasant for winter camping, and I expected to sleep well. I didn’t account for the wind. All night, even sheltered by the wall of rock, the wind was trying to tip over my car. It was like a constant earthquake for 8 hours. I should have just moved, but it’s hard to find another good spot to sleep beside the road after dark. I didn’t sleep much, so I dozed as well as I could, then got up at 6:30 (the sun rises at 8:30), and decided to get some night photos.
This turned out to be impossible. With my rubber footed tripod skittering across the ice, me being blown off balance even with my crampons on, and my camera bag strap humming in the wind, I decided to wait it out till sunrise behind a snowdrift. The wind was a little less here, and I could actually keep my hood up and hear myself think. As the sun started to rise, I ventured out, got a few photos, and then headed back to the car in hopes of finding a more sheltered spot.
One of the few sunrise photos I managed to get:
A further account of this trip and more photos can be found in this post.
Icy Cross Section
A cross-section of ice at Preacher’s Point on Abraham Lake.
Night Sky Over Lake Louise
Another night shot from Lake Louise. You can see the constellation of Orion right above Fairview Mountain and the Pleiades star cluster a little higher and to the right. The brightest star you can see right at the bottom is Sirius – the brightest star (besides our sun of course). That’s pretty much the extent of my constellation knowledge (for this part of the sky anyway). If there are any astonomy or mythology buffs out there, feel free to chime in.
Blue Green Mountain Lake
Here’s a pleasantly bright respite from the winter blues.
I’ve enjoyed this tour through past photos but I’m looking forward to moving on. I’ve been working full time at McBain through December and I’m really looking forward to January when I should have time to get outside and get some new material up here. I have lots of projects I’m eager to work on, and I’ll share them here as they progress.
Mysteries
Once things are discovered they lose some of their allure. With the imagination there are so many more possibilities.
The Edge of Light
Taken at Panther Falls about a month ago as the sun was coming up. For the curious, there were no color alterations done to this photo – just boosted the shadows a bit and took down the highlights to even out the exposure. This is a good example of different white balances in one photo. It can be a huge problem when photographing people, or it can look really awesome to get some complimentary colours in nature photos from an otherwise pretty colourless scene.
Athabasca Glacier from Wilcox Pass
The Athabasca Glacier from Wilcox Pass.
