Autumn Day Excursion to K-Country

Earlier this week, Bob Bear and I undertook an all-day photographic excursion into Kananaskis Country. The Round trip from/to Canmore totalled almost 400 km and took us close to 9 hours. We stopped at a number of locations to take photographs and even enjoyed a great Alberta beef burger in Longview. The late lunch ended our photographic endeavours and we headed directly back to Canmore. I did accumulate a large number of photographs, so I won’t overload you with all my “keepers” in today’s post. I’ve included some of my favourites from the first part of the journey, photos from along Highway 40, the Highroad Pass and a viewpoint over the Highwood River.

I’ll come back in a later blog with pictures taken in the area of Plateau Mountain, aka “the Hump”.

Today’s first picture was an unexpected bonus, taken soon after we had turned south onto Highway 40. We encountered some light sun showers near the Mt. Kidd RV Park and much to our delight found some very good rainbows. We got some good shots of this one.

A bit further down the road, as we approached the Highroad Pass, we espied this great view of Mount Tyrwhitt through the trees. The light on the mountain was brilliant and the scene worthy of a photograph.

We took some time at this location to capture more scenes coloured with the brilliant gold of the Larch trees in autumn. For those unfamiliar with the Larch tree (also known as a Tamarack), it is the only conifer whose needles turn colour in autumn before falling off for winter. I took this picture of a small Larch tree, nicely illuminated by the morning sunlight.

This next picture, also shot near the Highroad Pass features Grizzly Ridge 0n the left the Grizzly Col stretching from the middle to the right of the scene. You can see the profusion of Larch trees among the pines.

Looking to the North, I couldn’t miss this stunning view of the majestic Elpoca Mountain, also bathed in the morning sunlight. A nice mix of pines and larches in the foreground.

We continued on down Highway 40 until we stopped at this overlook of the Highwood River, nicely backgrounded by the Elk Range of mountains. I took the original photo in colour and when I converted it to black and white, I discovered that I preferred the latter.

My final shot before we reached “The Hump” features a nice, alpine meadow we came upon along Highway 940 near Cataract Creek. Bushes, shrubs and trees have all turned golden. A week later we might have missed the colour.

That’s it for today. I’ll be back in a few days with some pictures from the area of Plateau Mountain.