40 Mile Pass

One of the peaks of the 4, 5 or 6 day rides, 40 Mile Pass is a wide open plain between the Sawback and Vermillion mountain ranges. Known for being super windy it does have one bonus, no trees to soak you through!

As you've seen in the previous post, we had quite a dump of snow on the 21st of September. While it had melted at lower elevations, 40 Miles up high enough that there was still quite a bit there. In this photo you get to see Fresh Meat and Swine (with their beverages of choice of course) meandering their way down the valley. The view is looking North, back towards Flints. It was an awesome ride, fairly warm and we had Fresh Meat serenading us with country songs the entire way!

Enjoy!

Tear Down Snow

So tear down has come and gone once more. This year was not super warm like last year. Therewas no skinny dipping in Rainbow Lake, no riding in your bra and, best of all, no bugs! There was, however.... Snow! Gorgeous, refreshing, cold and wet. Stoney Creek was fairly uneventful. No snow, little rain, a couple drunk packers puking their guts out. Typical stuff. I jumped ahead of everyone else and skipped town after Stoney however and headed straight to Flints. Catching up with guests and the snow it was a nice relaxing evening and a wet and sloppy morning! Taking down a fence in half a foot of snow is definitely an experience not to mention all the snowbound tents. Want a little insight into what I'm talking about? Behold the Flints Park Teepee on the morning of September 21st, 2010. We cooks of course left it up for the guys to deal with although I did kindly sweep the snow off of it for them :)

Enjoy!

Elk Cow

With calving season just weeks to days away for the elk, the cows are starting to hang out close totown – and the stables – more regularly. Safety reasons and such. On one bright, sunny afternoon there was a handful hanging out behind Boones right when I happened to be off work so I stole a couple quick snapshots. Here is one of them! I converted it to black and white simply because, with the sun directly into the shot, the colour was a bit off. Washed out and silhouetted and such. With black and white it looks much less blazeh. So here you have it, fat cow elk ready to pop!

Enjoy!

Snow, Snow, Goose!

During a freak April snowstorm, which has since hit many more times and carried over into May, I decided to go for a walk. Actually.... I think this may have been on my birthday... Some gift to myself eh lol

In any event, for a walk I went and these geese I did find. They of course, swam across to the other side of the river but on the way I got a couple decent shots! In the background would be Mount Norquay but the ceiling was low that day, of course, so all you get is clouds!

Tuffy's Tail

   On March 10th pretty much our entire house meandered out to the ranch at Cochrane for the annual trimming. This is when the ferrier class from Olds College gets to come practice their trimming techniques on the horses while exposing us to their inflated ideas about well behaved horses. In any case, it was fun listening to these folks, even more fun catching the horses and of course, a great photo op! I wanted to try a few of the photos in sepia but for some reason I never like my sepia shots like others. Instead, I stuck with good ole' black n' white!

   Here we have Tuffy's fat, white bum as a background with his tail stuck in the fence as the focal point. Black and White didn't change this shot much since Tuffy's white and the fence is dark... but still, it brought out good contrast! This is a shot I'm submitting to the Calgary Stampede Western Showcase. We shall see how it stands up next to other photos!

An Unknown Mountain

An unknown mountain just south of Saskatchewan Crossing on the Icefield Parkway (Hwy 93) in Jasper National Park. I played tourist on this on and just pulled over on the side of the road and jumped out of Georgie (my truck). I like the lighting and cloud coverage of the shot. It's one of many from the day trip Sara and I took up to Jasper and back around via the trunk road, back to Banff. It was an awesome, albeit long day, that was a refreshing change of mountains and great opportunities for more photos that you're sure to see posted on here!

Blurry Bull Elk

  After a wonderfully helpful friend helped - actually did all the work - and fixed my truck, I once again can go for drives! On the first test outing to see if it would work, Sara and I found two separate bachelor herds of elk. The second was of larger males and they were closer to the road. This big fella actually crossed the road in front of us so he wasn't totally in the bush and hiding behind trees. Unfortunately, because of the time of day and he just kept moving! the shot was fairly blurred. I've been testing varying types of sharpening processes on him but to very little avail on the larger image. Small it looks half decent, larger... not so much lol Still, enjoy as much as you can! :D

**NOTE: Larger version is poor quality**