Scenes from Yoho NP

This past week I ventured west with a cadre of great photographers for a photo excursion to Yoho National Park, about an hour and 15 minutes from home in Canmore. There were five of us including Bob Bear, Stew Hamilton, Hugh Williamson and Sal LoVecchio, all intent on capturing some great scenes from this beautiful park.

Named for a Cree expression of awe and wonder, Yoho NP lies on the western slopes of the Canadian Rocky Mountains in British Columbia. Most of our efforts on this day revolved around the Kicking Horse River, near the small railroad town of Field B.C.

Our first stop in the area was just off the road to Emerald Lake. We walked down a fire road into an area where the Kicking Horse River is joined by two other waterways, a small unnamed creek and the Emerald River. Here’s that unnamed creek as it flows into the Kicking Horse River. You can see the different colours of the water coming together.

 

Ultimately the greater volume of the Kicking Horse’s olive-coloured water will prevail, but not until after it’s joined by the Emerald River, a short distance downstream from this location. This picture was taken at an advantageous location to display the blending of the two streams. I also like the view that this scene offers with Mount Hurd in the background.

This photograph was taken looking back upstream just beyond the point where the unnamed creek enters the Kicking Horse. Despite the overcast skies, some good sunlight was getting through, nicely illuminating the colours of the river waters. Of course, it’s usually easy to position a mountain in the background to complete the scene. In this case, it’s Mount Dennis.

Walking along a fire road to this site from the Natural Bridge  are a number of interesting photo opportunities. I like this small pond and its surrounding vegetation. On this particular day, my eye was attracted to the reflections of the surrounding trees on the still water. On some occasions, the light on the water would be dismissed as glare, not necessarily desirable. Glare can be reduced or even eliminated using a circular polarizing filter (same idea as sunglasses). In this case, I tested a number of settings to retain some glare (critical to seeing the reflections) while keeping the pond’s bottom visible.

One of the attractions of this area are its wildflowers. I chose to present this image in black and white with only the bluebells in colour. I didn’t want to take a close-up. As a consequence of including a greater view, the bluebells were not as visible as I would like amid the surrounding greens. They certainly stand out better against the monochrome background.

As we re-grouped at the Natural Bridge, I had some time to take a few pictures at that location. Natural Bridge is a popular tourist stop on the way to Emerald Lake. It’s name refers to a span, carved from the rock by the swirling water as it approaches what was once a waterfall. The water now descends through a hole in the rock, leaving a bridge of stone above it.  I think of a washing machine as I look at this scene. The great volume at this time of year contributes to the turbulence created by a lot of water jamming its way through this modest-sized opening. The turbulence is captured by “freezing” the action using a shutter opening of 1/4000 second.

For this last photo, we traveled to a favourite location just north of Field on the Yoho Valley Road. It’s known as “Meeting of the Waters”, the confluence of the Kicking Horse (right) and the Yoho (left) Rivers. At this point, the Yoho is the dominant stream and it contributes the pale, olive green colour. The Yoho is glacier fed and is coloured by the fine  “rock flour”, created by glacial grinding of the mountain rock. The blended stream, now the Kicking Horse River soon becomes olive green in colour and retains that colour as it conjoins smaller rivers (such as the Emerald) on its path to the Columbia.