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Final Foto Frenzy

On August 13, Bob Bear and I wrapped up our series of visits to the Ice Field Parkway and our final day of photographing its striking scenery. Today, I’ll share some of my favourites for that day, all captured in Jasper National Park, the last and northern-most segment of our travels.

Most of today’s photographs feature Athabasca Falls, a waterfall on the upper Athabasca River, approximately 30 kilometres south of the townsite of Jasper, Alberta. The height of the falls is 23 metres (75 ft.) and the average flow rate is 113 cubic metres per second (3,990 cubic feet per second). The reason for the many waterfalls photos is that they are simply the best of what I took that day. Although the Athabasca Falls are not particularly high, the flow rate of the water is impressive.

The first scene is a direct view of the falls from its brink to the bottom.

The second photo of these same falls shows the base of the falls and the outflow of the Athabasca River through the gorge beyond the waterfall.

This next scene tracks the river’s flow through the surrounding gorge on its way to resuming a more leisurely flow northward to Jasper and beyond.

This photograph was chosen to capture the rainbow that forms just as the water tumbles over the brink of the falls, where mist from the turbulent flow interacts with sunlight to produce this colourful spectrum.

Now for a change of pace, this next scene was captured earlier in the day along our trajectory north. It features the Rampart Ponds in the foreground, shaded by the mountains across the valley behind and not yet warmed by the morning sun. In the background are Mount Amery (left) and Mount Saskatchewan (right) reflected in the pond.

Today’s final picture was taken at Horseshoe Lake on one of our final stops as we traveled homeward. My attention was drawn to this very old tree along the rocky shore of the lake. It’s an interesting subject, surrounded by the rock walls of the lake and complemented by the striking colour of the water.

After one more stop, it was time to complete the trip home. Two and a half hours later, we reached that destination, content with completion of a successful series of photo shoots and looking forward to the next stage in our project, editing the photographs.

PS The submerged rock formation (reef) seen in the featured image at the top of the page was also taken at Horseshoe Lake.