8 Day Canadian Rockies Trip
5.8.2019 - 5.15.2019
Earlier in May I went on a family trip to the Canadian Rockies. We flew into Calgary and rented a car to drive through Banff and Jasper. This was my first time out there and I was pretty blown away by the scale of the range–it felt magnitudes grander than the Sierra Nevada, what I consider my home mountain range. Much of the park was still covered in snow, making a lot of hikes inaccessible, but what we were able to see and hike was absolutely gorgeous. The light was pretty variable but it ended up being quite hard to take a terrible photo even with suboptimal weather at sunrise or sunset.
We just did dayhikes this trip (no backcountry time) so I brought a pretty full photography kit: D800 with RRS L-plate, 16-35 f/4, 80-200 f/2.8, Feisol tripod with Acratech Ultimate ballhead, and the trusty B+W 10-stop ND filter. I would have liked to bring a fast prime but I knew I was going to mainly focus on big landscapes and the occasional wildlife. I shoot a lot of portrait landscapes so the L-plate is pretty much indispensable; RRS and Kirk both make a pretty comparable high-quality product.
Travel
We had a pretty relaxed itinerary:
- Fly into Calgary via United
- 2 nights in Banff proper
- 2 nights in Lake Louise
- 2 nights in Jasper
The rental company gave us this sweet red Jeep Wrangler. I didn’t really enjoy driving it due to its super heavy throttle and slow gearbox, but it felt fitting for the trip.
Banff is a strange place–in the words of my sister, it feels like an outdoorsy Disneyland, more so even than Yosemite Valley I think because there’s an actual town in the middle of the park. Extremely family friendly. For our first day, we hiked to the top of Sulphur Mountain and took the gondola back down. The trail was mostly covered in snow and it turned out to actually be a pretty stout climb with a nice panoramic view at the top.
That night I headed out to Two Jack Lake for sunset. There were a couple other photographers hanging out waiting for the light to hit Mount Rundle but it didn’t seem super promising so they all left. Right at sunset I got a tiny bit of alpenglow on the peak–in retrospect I think this was the best light I got the whole trip.
In the morning I tried Vermillion Lakes. Sunrise was cloudy but the light on the backside of Rundle ended up being kind of cool anyway.
That day we hiked up Johnston Canyon to see the waterfalls. It was a somewhat crowded hike but I’d highly recommend it. The canyon itself has some fascinating rock formations and the falls are quite nice as well. I thought the lower falls were actually more impressive than the upper (both of the posted shots are of the lower falls only).
At the lower falls you can enter a small cave to get a much closer view, which ended up being one of my favorite views from the hike.
At the top of the canyon we continued toward the Inkpots but the increasing ice on the trail forced us to turn around after around a mile.
As we traveled north and to a higher elevation, we found that Vermillion Lake was still totally frozen such that people were walking around on the surface ice.
Light at sunset was actually decent, although it didn’t hit the original composition I was going for.
I drove up to the Icefields Parkway (Highway 93) for sunrise at Bow Lake which again turned out cloudy. Again, even bad light doesn’t really detract from how rugged and photogenic these mountains are. On the drive back to the hotel there was a nice view of Hector Lake from the highway that showed nicely the scale of the peaks.
That evening I went back up Highway 93 to Herbert Lake, a small lake only about a 15 minute drive north of Lake Louise. I had some trouble finding a good composition at the lake edge but the golden sunset was incredible.
Jasper felt much less touristy than Banff or Lake Louise, I think due to its distance from any airport. It is about a 3 hour drive from Banff town. I ended up taking it easy and not doing much serious photography in Jasper but I’d highly recommend the Valley of Five Lakes hike for a low effort high reward dayhike. Sunwapta Falls is quite cool but more of a pit stop on the drive up from Banff than an activity in itself. On the drive back to Calgary we ran into this guy on the side of the road, a perfect end to the trip.
Really looking forward to coming back and exploring the backcountry or peaks when there’s less snow.