2010 Canadian Rockies Fall Colors Trip

2010 Canadian Rockies Fall Colors

When my family and I started exploring the Canadian Rockies in 1994, 1995, and 1996, I wasn't much of a photographer, so we spent a lot of our time hiking, backpacking, and enjoying the back-country. I became a somewhat decent photographer by the 2000, but for one reason or another, never did visit the Canadian Rockies since.

Since my retirement from Google in April, I've decided that I should take a trip dedicated to photography. A photography trip is very different from any other kind of trip: you effectively spend most of your time looking for sunrises and sunsets, and non-photographers get annoyed by the amount of time spent shooting. None of my other photographer friends could join me, however, so I had to do the trip alone. That made this my first solo trip in 10 years or so as well! Note that while Glacier National Park is in the U.S., from a geological point of view it's part of the Canadian Rockies.

In the past, I've had issues with putting together photo albums: there's a fundamental conflict between including only the good shots and good trip reporting. This time, I'm trying a different tack: the good shots are in the album above, and I'll create a different photo album for photojournalism entries. During the trip, I shot about 3399 exposures, and selected 71 photos to be included in the above "best of" album. That's an abysmal hit rate: for the Grand Tetons trip, I exposed about 900 frames and got about 80 usable slides out of it. Nevertheless, many of those 80 slides were photojournalism shots, and looking at the album I have up, I don't think the number of strong photos have gone down.

Over the next few days, a full trip report will follow, and then I really do have to get back to my next book.

Trip Report

• Day 1: Kalispell to Apgar Creek
  
• Day 2: Apgar Creek to St. Mary's
  
• Day 3: St. Mary's to Many Glacier
  
• Day 4: Many Glacier to Waterton Lakes National Park
  
• Day 5: Waterton Lakes National Park
  
• Day 6: Waterton Lakes National Park to Banff
  
• Day 7: Banff to Lake Louise
  
• Day 8: Lake Louise to Egypt Lake hut
  
• Day 9: Egypt Lake Hut
  
• Day 10: Egypt Lake Hut to Jasper
  
• Day 11: Jasper to Wilcox Pass Trailhead Campground
  
• Day 12: Wilcox Pass Trailhead Campground to Banff
  
• Day 13: Banff to Many Glacier
  
• Day 14: Many Glacier to Kalispell
  
• Epilogue and Conclusions