Photos

This is another of my favorite photos from my 2008 Canadian Rockies vacation. It is at Athabasca Falls in Jasper National Park, taken about 5:30pm. We left Lake Louise that morning and it took us about 8 hours to make our way that far, an early snowstorm chased behind us - you can see it starting to envelop Mt. Kerkeslin in the background. The clouds washed out the sky, but I was not trying to show it anyway, I wanted to capture the force of the waterfall and the craggy walls of the canyon it has forged over the millennium. This is a typical site in Jasper National Park, just wild beauty with more wild beauty in the background and on the horizon. Everywhere you look there is something worth photographing, remembering.

One thing I found truly remarkable about Athabasca Falls was the quality of the paved trails around that part of the falls. They were wide and well kept with lots of informational plaques everywhere. Even though it was evident that Parcs Canada had spent millions of dollars improving the tourist's ability to view the falls from many angles, it was easy to get lots of great photographs that were not interrupted by the evidence of the hand of man. I did manage to include a couple humans in the photo - it was hard not to because this is a really popular stop along the Icefield Parkway - you can see them almost in the center of the photograph to the right of the top of the falls. It does add a small sense of scale, but it's an illusion. These are not terribly tall falls (about 80 feet) - they are just very powerful. I shot this in autumn, I can imagine they are quite spectacular in spring when the glaciers start to melt again.

This was a most wonderful vacation - I still dream about it every night and ponder the way I would shoot these sites if I were able to do it all over again.

Thanks for looking!