mountains – D’Arcy Norman dot net

For my morning ride, I headed west on 1A to Cochrane, to take on the epic hill. Beautiful morning for a ride…

That dip in the middle is the Cochrane hill. About 200m of elevation over just 3km. It’s a fun climb 🙂

A few years ago, we headed into the mountains to spend a few days at a cabin with family. It’s a development built on top of the remains of a failed ski resort on Pigeon Mountain, overlooking the Bow Valley. The weather was pretty crappy for much of the stay, but I was drawn to the way the clouds and wisps played along the crags. I think these peaks are Windtower and The Rimwall, forming the south part of the famous Three Sisters overlooking Canmore.

Banff Gate 40

I wound up shooting a few hundred photos of the mountains while we were there, fascinated by the changes in light and shadow, and the motion of the clouds through the peaks. In most of the photos, the colour was so subdued that it was almost black and white – but I added a proper black and white filter in Aperture to help bring out the details in the rocks.

This photo was taken using my Canon XT and 70-300mm lens at 300mm, handheld. There’s some softness in the image due to the crappy lens and motion of hand-holding.

Next time I spend some time there, I’ll try to do some time-lapse videos. Amazing stuff, and close to home.

Banffgatephotos

barrier lake autumn hike

We headed west today, for what seems to be a Thanksgiving tradition – an easy family hike in the mountains. We stopped at the Barrier Lake ecology research station, which is now part of the University of Calgary campus. The site was originally a military camp, used as an internment facility and later a prisoner of war camp during world war II. Evan was pretty blown away that this camp even exists, and even moreso after learning some of the history. After exploring the research station path, we went across the highway to check out Barrier Dam, and the lake. Definitely not an unattractive region, especially with autumn colours.