Banff and Jasper Trip, Part 1

After a few days of talking about cameras, gear and an update on the upcoming bird photography tour, it is time to get back to business. I am in the process of writing a camera review, no not new hardware just yet, but of my backup camera the D40x, which shared the burden of travel photography along side my D300. The camera review after that, should be more interesting for those looking to buy a modern camera. That will be at least a month down the road from now, but I will let you know what camera it is in a few weeks when I start the process for the review.

Now that the business is out of the way, it is time to start talking about my recent trip to Banff and Jasper National Parks in Alberta, Canada. My first stop along the journey, wasn't even in Alberta, but rather in British Columbia, at Mt.Robson. Mt.Robson is the largest mountain in the Canadian section of the Rocky Mountain range, and it stands 3953 meter or 12,969 feet above sea level, dominating the landscape around it.

Mt.Robson as seen from the Yellowhead Highway (Highway 16) on Sept 7, 2010

When I arrived at Robson Meadows, a campground near the mountain, it was completely obscured by rain clouds, so I didn't exactly know where it was. Later in the evening the rain stopped and most of the cloud cover broke up. At that point I was able to see Mt.Robson, but only in part due to some lingering clouds that clung to its' peak.  The next morning, as I was leaving to start the second leg of my trip, I was presented with the scene in the photo above. I took a few photos from different angel, but I think the one shown is the best of them. All the shots were taken with my D40x and Nikon 18-70mm DX kit lens.

From a photographic standpoint the photo is an average travel snapshot at best, but I wasn't trying to win any awards at the time. Part of the reason for the hurried shot, was the weather forecast, which was calling for rain in Jasper the afternoon I was leaving Mt.Robson. Since I wanted to leave early and setup camp before the bad weather hit I didn't take a lot of time on my shots around Mt.Robson. For better shots I would have gone out to the meadows closer to the mountain, but sometimes you have to work with what is given to you when traveling. I hope that next time I visit Mt.Robson I'll have better weather conditions, and more time!

Mt.Robson, as seen on the evening of Sept 6, 2010

At this point of my trip I had driven over 900km or 559 miles, from Vancouver, and I was only about an hours drive away from my first major objective, the city of Jasper, Alberta and the National Park which bears its' name. I'll be posting about the second part of my trip on Monday.

Read the second part of this series