Banff
Banff National Park is Canada’s first national park. Located west of Calgary in Alberta Provence, the park consists of 2,600 square miles of unparalleled mountain scenery nestled in the heart of the magnificent Canadian Rockies.
The terrain is largely rugged and mountainous, particularly in its western section along the Continental Divide. Most of the rest of the land is designated as subalpine or montane (moist, cool upland slopes below the timberline).
Many of the peaks rise above 10,000 feet. Over hundreds of thousands of years, glaciers have given the mountains a toothlike appearance.
Lakes with a Mountain View
The Vermilion Lakes are three large wetland lakes located immediately west of Banff, Alberta, in the park. The three lakes are in the Bow River valley, at the foot of Mount Norquay.
Vermillion Lakes Drive, just off Canadian Highway 1, affords spectacular views of Mount Rundle. Mount Rundle could actually be considered a small mountain range. Extending for over 7.5 miles, the mountain has seven distinct peaks.
The Cree Native Americans called it Waskahigan Watchi or house mountain. In 1858 John Palliser renamed the mountain after Reverend Robert Rundle, who performed Methodist missionary work in the 1840s in this area.
The Shot
In February of 2019, good friends Jon Christofersen, Mike Loebach, and I were on a winter photography workshop in the Canadian Rockies. Arriving in Banff a day early, we decided to squeeze in a morning sunrise shoot before joining the rest of the group later the next day for the start of the workshop.
We drove down Vermillion Lakes Road in the late afternoon and located a promising location for a dawn photoshoot. After dropping a GPS pin on our phone, we returned to Banff for dinner.
The next morning, well before dawn, we returned to our now very cold and very dark location. As twilight approached, we started making out the shape of Mount Rundle in the center of our composition.
A half hour before sunrise, we were rewarded with a fiery sky full of clouds. And the reflections of Mount Rundle and Sulphur Mountain to the right could be seen in the still waters of Vermillion Lake. We moved around furiously trying to improve our compositions.
By the time the sun peeked above the mountain, the show was over. We packed up our gear and headed back to Banff for hot coffee and breakfast.
Thanks for looking,
Chuck Derus