[You may view a map of Jasper National Park in PDF format.]

I awoke before the 6:00 alarm because I was all excited to go photograph sunrise at my favorite spot in Jasper National Park. Had my normal breakfast with instant coffee to go. I used about half Nescafé, which finished off the jar, and half Folgers. It was 20°F (-2°C) when I left at 6:29 in the Jeep by myself. J wanted to stay in the RV and relax.

It was really dark and clear, and I could still see lots of stars.

I reached Horseshoe Lake at 6:54 and turned around at the trailhead because it was so dark that I couldn't see my favorite shooting spot which is about a quarter of a mile (about 400m) before the trailhead. I waited for a while for it to get brighter, then I prepped some camera gear. I headed down the steep hill to the lake, set up at my favorite spot, then waited. Color started to appear on the clouds around 7:25, about 15 minutes before official sunrise. The color wasn't very intense, but it added a nice touch to the image (below left). After the color started to fade, I packed up and headed back up the hill to the Jeep and went ...


To Athabasca Falls at 7:56. I find the main falls difficult to photograph because they go down a narrow slot and there is a lot of water. This time I focussed my attention on the small cascades just upstream of the main falls on the south side (above right). Then I photographed way downstream almost at the end of the canyon. As I was making my way back to the parking lot, I saw that two tour busses had disgorged their energetic tourists who were oohing and aahing. I left at 9:21 and took Alberta-93A back north.

The clouds weren't interesting over the small ponds and lakes along the road, so I didn't stop to photograph them and the mountains in the background. I went down the dirt road to Moab Lake. I don't recall ever going down there before, and I wanted to scout it for photographic opportunities. I found some potential places to shoot, but the mixed light coming through the broken clouds and filtering through the evergreens wasn't good right then.

I returned to the RV at 10:17, all excited to take advantage of the good light for animals after I picked up J. She wasn't interested in going out, and wanted to stay in the RV to relax and get some work done on her computer. :( Because I didn't want to take the Jeep for the rest of the day and leave J w/o any shooting opportunities, I reluctantly decided to stay in the RV too.

I read the paperwork for the US Gear Universal Breaking System that we use in the Jeep when it's being towed. I wanted to find out why the brake system cycles intermittently when the RV isn't running. Then I called their tech support to see what they thought, and they said it probably is due to the bad breakaway switch on the Jeep. The US Gear system has a breakaway switch so that if the Jeep comes completely free from the RV while it's being towed, the brake system is activated to keep the Jeep from going too far.

Then I went outside to fix up the wheel well that had ben damaged when our right-rear inner tire blew out. (You may read more about the tire blow out on my blog entry for September 25, 2009.) While doing that, I tilted the solar-electric panels because we hadn't been getting much solar power (only 3-4A) and the sun was directly off the passenger side of the RV. Tilting the panels didn't do much (we were still only getting 4-5A) because the light was being filtered by some trees. I finished working on the wheel well, then replaced some screws that hold the lower skirt panels on the RV in place.

Had lunch around 12:35 of my regular ham-and-Swiss on rye with Grey Poupon Country Dijon mustard and a glass of Coca Cola Classic, followed by a banana and an apple. After I finished, I backed up the RV so we could get unobstructed sunshine on our solar panels, and we went from getting about 5A to 25A. :) I worked up a blog entry and took it live. Shortly before we were going to leave to go photograph, I moved the RV back to where it had been so we would continue to get good solar-electric power while we were gone. We left at 3:33 in the Jeep and headed north along Alberta-93.

The sky was clear — not too good for wildlife photography.

We stopped for a suspicious collection of cars parked along the road to the transfer station. There were two bull elk fighting in the woods, so we quickly set up to photograph them. I put my 100-400 on the Canon EOS 1D Mk III because we would be photographing them from rather close range, and I wanted to be able to change the framing quickly. I also photographed handheld to facilitate movement — my movement to different spots, not camera movement for blurry images. :) With few exceptions, I always photograph from a tripod unless I'm on a boat or am photographing birds in flight. The elk were really going at it, and it was quite exciting to watch, especially because I didn't have antlers big enough to protect me from either of them. :) The mixed light in the forest wasn't particularly good for photography, but the intense fight was spectacular! The fight lasted a long time, and one woman who had been videotaping it said she had recorded 18 minutes of the fight. We packed up and let some of the adrenaline wear off before going across the main highway to photograph the victor cooling off in the river. We left at 4:24 and continued heading north along Alberta-93.
We stopped to photograph a group of bighorn sheep at 4:35. As we were setting up, J started changing lenses and pulled out her 24-105. I had been planning to use my 500 f4 like usual, but then considered the environment (nice mountains in the background) and subject (really relaxed and easily approachable bighorns), and got out my 24-105 too. I photographed hand-held to facilitate movement. I was breaking my always-shoot-from-a-tripod rule twice in one day! I was really glad I had chosen the 24-105 because I had been shooting portraits recently and now I was getting some quite different images that were also exciting. I wasn't able to get any good images of the group of bighorns together, but one ewe was very cooperative and I was able to get lots of great images of her. While we were both focusing on her, the rest of the sheep crossed the highway. Then a concerned young man came striding over to us to let us know that it wasn't good to cut off one goat (yes he said "goat") from the rest of the group, yadda yadda yadda. J thanked him for his concern, and he left. The ewe in question hadn't been blocked off from the rest of the group, and she had only been nervous when the helpful young man came striding over to us — bloody idiot! We left at 4:58 after exhausting the photographic possibilities, and the ewe stayed exactly where she had been grazing while we were photographing her at the end — she was definitely stressed by our presence. :)

We kept heading north along Alberta-93, then stopped to photograph another group of bighorn sheep. A ewe with three lambs was crossing the cliff, and about 33 others were down on the grass by the road. We left around 5:45 and started heading "home."

We went by another group of about 20 bighorn sheep up on a grassy hillside. We stopped to photograph some more bighorn sheep by the road, and they went down to the river to drink. We left at 6:42.

We returned to the RV at 7:10. I downloaded images from this afternoon while J made dinner.

Had dinner of grilled chicken salad with pitted Kalamata olives and Extra Special Country Trail Mix. The Extra Special Country Trail Mix is from WalMart Canada and has soybeans, pumpkin seeds, sunflower kernels, raisins, almonds, and dried cherries. It was a tasty addition to the salad!

After dinner I showered, then J showered while I started to clean up the kitchen. After doing the dishes, I did a quick edit of the images from today in iView.