Banff Legacy Trail

It's been a while since the last post, but it's summer and being outside when the weather is good always has a high priority for me, even in these strange times.

For the first time in a while I've had my bicycle out a lot over the last month or so. Last weekend I decided to head out to Canmore to cycle the Banff Legacy trail from Canmore to Banff. Saturday was a beautiful day weatherwise allowing for some decent photographic opportunities which I share in the gallery below.

Parks Canada provides full information for the Banff Legacy trail on their website but generally it's uphill from Canmore to Banff with about 140m of elevation gain and about 60m elevation loss. It took me almost 2 hours to cycle the appoximate 25km from the Canmore Information Center to Banff, but there were lots of stops for photographs and I wasn't in any hurry.

The main street in Banff is closed this summer to allow pedestrians more space for social distancing. This has caused traffic chaos in the town, so cycling over from Canmore is a great way to aviod the traffic! After having a delicious lunch at a local greek restaurant and exploring Bow Falls I headed back to the car in Canmore, the return trip took almost an hour and a half, again lots of photo stops.

I'll be visiting Banff again by bicycle this summer and probably head to Vermillion Lakes on the section of trail on the other side of Banff.

I've been working on some other projects this summer as well, I'm not ready to roll those out just yet, but a recent trip to Mount Robson Park in British Columbia has provided some interesting content that I'm trying to decide how best to present. Stay tuned!

Mount Robson Provincial Park - Base Camp

It's kind of a tradition that on or near Canada Day Alex and I head out for some adventure or another, last year was Prince Rupert. This year we decided to go low key with a week long camping trip to Mount Robson Park in the Rockies.

This is the first in a short series of posts that describe our 2020 adventure.

The plan was to set up a base camp at Robson Meadows campsite and then do a series of day hikes to explore the park. We had previously hiked the Berg Lake Trail around 2010 and it seemed like a good opportunity to re-explore the park without the usual crush of foreign tourists.

I left Calgary on June 29th to get camp set-up at Mount Robson then planned to drive to Prince George on the 30th to pick up Alex. It was raining in Calgary when I left the city, but by the time I reached Yellowhead Pass west of Jasper on Highway 16 the sun was shining, so I managed to get the base camp set-up in the dry. Alex would help tweak things more to our liking upon his arrival.

The weather was good on the journey from Robson to Prince George but began to turn on the trip back to Mount Robson base camp. By the time we got back to Robson in the late afternoon the rain had begun. Rain that wouldn't stop for 3 1/2 days. In fact it rained every day we were there, but had reduced to showers for the last couple of days.

Alex was quick to employ his excellent base camp skills and carved us some drainage ditches with a camp stick to keep the tent and fire pit areas dry and also to shore up the tarps to weather the storm.

All good, we are well prepared for poor weather, and on July 1st we did a side trip to Hinton and Jasper for additional stove fuel and a larger tarp to expand the kitchen a little.

Generally we stuck to the original plan and managed some day trips to explore the Robson Valley, but decided to hold off on some of the hiking until we could return with hopefully drier weather.

The side adventures included trips to Dunster, Valemount, McBride, Reargurd Falls and Overlander Falls as well as the previously mentioned Jasper and Hinton AB. There will be additional posts on these side adventures.

Below are a few photographs of our base camp at Robson Meadows.

Enjoy!

Shadow and Color on an Early Morning Ride

It was a beautiful morning in Calgary today, the forecast called for rain, and it may still come, but the dawn was clear. I decided it was time for a bike ride so grabbed my digital camera and headed out.

I covered some familiar spots, maybe from a slightly different angle, but I like the light I was able to catch. I've attached a few of my favourites.

If the rain comes later I'm planning to shoot a roll of HP5 film to capture scenes using the wet streets as a reflector, we shall see. If that turns out I'll share a few of those here as well.

Dean.