I’ve taken advantage of our great autumn weather this year to take a lot of photos of colourful fall scenes. Today, I’ll share a number of them, taken on two separate occasions. The first three were taken a little early in the season, on September 23. The aspen trees had not yet achieved full autumn spendour, but the larch trees and brush at higher elevations were peaking.
This first scene features Mount Lorette where you can see a little colour, mostly along the edges of the pond and on the lower slopes of the mountain. Not great. Consider this as the starting point of the autumn colour changes.
I do like the photograph, notably the sky. Mount Lorette is not a volcano and that is not an eruption emerging from its peak. It’s just a coincidence; a cloud with a plume-like appearance passing over the apex of the mountain.
This next photograph is a good example of an alpine autumn. Pocaterra Ridge in the background has an elevation of 2,667 m. (8,750 ft.) so it’s cooler up there and autumn colours happen earlier. The bright golden conifers among the green pines are larch trees. Bushes and ground cover bring colour to the avalanche tracks, the bottom of the cirque on the right and the the slope in the centre.
Highwood Ridge is a very interesting geologic structure. The striations in the rock are emphasized in a variety of colours, not seasonal but they do fit in well with the colours of autumn emerging below. Secondly, I’m struck by the symmetry of the ridge around its low point. Striations are angled inward toward the centre, converging near that low point.
I returned to Kananaskis yesterday, October 2, nine days later in the autumn season. I went with Kevin McCormick, a fellow member of the Canmore Camera Club and a skilled photographer. We photographed in a different area of K-Country, along Highway 40 toward the northern end of the Kananaskis River Valley.
One of our stops was my second visit to Troll Falls this year. I visited this area in February when the falls looked quite different. You can refer to the following blog to see what I mean…https://www.shotsbypeter.com/blog/?p=16551
Not a lot of colour in this gorge, but you can see some signs of autumn in the shrubbery on the rockface and above the falls.
The next two photos were taken early in the morning, near the bridge crossing the Kananaskis River, leading to the Kananaskis Village and the Nakiska Ski Resort. Facing northward, this scene includes the bridge and Mount Lorette.
Looking to the southwest from a vantage point a little further upstream, I took this picture of Mount Kidd.
No trip to Kananaskis in the autumn is complete without a stop at the Wedge Pond. With the afternoon sun in the south, the aspens on the right and their reflections in the pond were brightly illuminated.
The final two pictures were taken in the area near Boundary Ranch, a grassland with groves of aspen and colourful shrubs. This first picture was taken with Skogan Peak in the background .
From roughly the same location, I took this next picture facing west. To the right is Mount Allan, site of the Nakiska Ski Resort and the alpine venue for the 1988 Winter Olympic Games. In the centre of the scene is Mount Sparrowhawk.
Our last stop en route for home. This scene takes on an entire new life in the autumn. That large, golden patch is a pale green colour in the summer and although it is eye-catching it can’t compete with the hues of autumn.
That wraps it up for autumn scenes in K-Country. I have a few more that I took in the Town of Canmore and I plan to use them in a final post of autumn pictures for this year.