One of our favourite destinations during wildflower season, Grizzly Peak is also a solid option for larch season. Less well-known than the crowded trails around Lake Louise, it's a half-day hike that's easy to extend with a ridge walk or an exploration of Pocaterra Cirque.
As of August 2017, humans take somewhere around 93 million selfies per day. The average millenial will take more than 25,000 selfies in his/her lifetime. I'm definitely not a millenial, and if there's a trick to taking flattering selfies, I haven't figured it out; a phone camera lens in close proximity to my already angular face is not a recipe for success. So I generally turn my back on the whole idea of selfies. So in the spirit of the photo blogging challenge, I got creative and used some old school methods to craft a handful of self-portraits for September.
I haven't done much black and white photography. But that changed thanks to this month's photo blogging challenge. I switched my digital camera to monotone mode; that camera processee the jpg files in black and white while leaving me with full colour RAW files for blogging, tweeting, etc. The other result from changing the picture mode to monotone is that everything seen through the EVF and on the LCD screen is in black and white. That really helped me focus on shape, form, lines, patterns, textures and other sources of tonal contrast - elements of composition that become particularly important when colour isn't part of the equation. The biggest thing I learned by doing this is that viewing a composition in black and white makes for stronger compositions; I think I'll use this mode on a semi-regular basis.
We first hiked to Citadel Pass in 2009. After seven years, two things prompted us to return: first, there's summer weekend gondola service to Sunshine Village; and second, the moderate elevation gain is something I can handle even with a torn ACL. Our late July timing was ideal. The wildflowers were fantastic! We also spotted a male Mountain Bluebird and enjoyed the company of countless Columbian Ground Squirrels. For more than half the day we enjoyed blue skies which meant great long distance viewing of the cone of Mt. Assiniboine - something cloaked by forest fire smoke during our 2009 exploration of this trail.
In between all the other activities we enjoyed at Sparkling Hill Resort, I found time to be out and about exploring the trail network in the area. The map available in each guest room shows 8 trails covering a total of 12.5 km (7.5 miles). They are named for wildlife in the area (e.g. Falcon …