I went out Saturday morning with friend and neighbour, Stewart Hamilton to do some autumn photography. It was a beautiful morning, partly cloudy, sunny and reasonably warm. We decided to try a location we hadn’t visited for awhile, Spray Lake. It’s located due south of Canmore, about 5 km as the crow flies, on the opposite side of the mountain range behind our house. Of course, it’s a little farther by car as the roads never go anywhere directly, in our mountainous terrain. Nonetheless, it didn’t take long and we soon located a nice spot on the lake shore to take some shots.
I shouldn’t have been surprised by the difference in weather we encountered, overcast and cooler with intermittent rain. We were now in the Spray Valley, on the opposite side of the mountain range and about 1,250 ft. (380 m.) higher in elevation. That makes a difference, only 5 km from where we started out in the Bow Valley. We didn’t see a lot of autumn colour but we did enjoy some great scenes featuring the clouds. I’ve included this next shot of Old Goat Mountain which I particularly like.
As time progressed, it began to rain more heavily and having captured a number of satisfying photos, we elected to return to the more gentle weather of the Bow Valley. We went to the area of Quarry Lake in Canmore which offers some great views of Mount Rundle, stretching down the valley toward Banff. As you can see from the following picture (taken about an hour later) the weather is markedly different. And, lo and behold there are the autumn colours we set out to find and photograph!
After getting our quota of autumn scenes in the sunny Bow Valley, we called it a morning and went home.A great day!