Chester Lake - November 9th, 2013

I drove out to Kananaskis today to visit the mountains. It's been a while since I've been able to get out and hold my camera in my hands and make some photos. I picked up some snowshoes on Friday and was wanting to try them out. In my research there are lots of cross country ski trails, but there aren't that many official snowshoe trails around. Chester Lake has some snowshoe trails and had received quite a bit of snow last weekend.  I'd been up there recently for fall photos so there is where I wanted to go.

Mt Chester

Larches at Chester Lake - October 6th, 2013

I escaped the city a bit late (around noon) and wanted to drive down highway 40 to look for fall colours. My original plans for the day were to go to Chester lake to see the Larch trees that grow there. I'd been there a couple years ago with the kids in the summer and I had noticed that there were larch trees along the edge of the lake. Anytime I see larch trees I imagine going to that place in the fall to see them. For those of you that don't know larch trees are an evergreen (or Christmas tree) who's needles turn an intense yellow in the fall and fall off, just like a leafy tree. The needles grow out again in the spring and are soft like a koosh ball. They're usually found at alpine levels - high up on the mountains often at the top of the treeline. Now that it is early October and fall is quite established I hoped they'd be in their glory.