The second half of our backpacking trip led us to Waterton Park in southern Alberta. It’s an interesting park as everything is sort of compressed in it; lots of mountains, lakes, and great hikes. We backpacked into Crandall Lake and the camp spot was beautiful and we spent Friday relaxing by the lake and taking some pictures in the area. On Saturday we hiked the Akamina Ridge which is actually in Kishinena Provincial Park just over the BC border. We started at 4am so we could get first light on the ridge and it was well worth it. The hike brought us up Forum Lake where it was a moderate scramble up to the ridge and then a walk along four peaks. The wind was strong and cold making it feel like a fall day at about minus five!

My favourites from the weekend

We stumbled upon three bucks while making our way up to the saddle on the approach to the ridge…they didn’t really seem to care that we were there.

The ridge reflected in Wall Lake

Karyn scrambling up to the ridge

Nothing grows much more than a few inches off the ground on the ridge because the wind is so strong up there. Kevan’s lucky he didn’t blow off!

The view from our way down. There was a fairly significant avalanche that occurred which wiped away the trail near Wall Lake so we had to make our own trail in the forest. Thick brush sucks to hike through!

…and some of Kevan’s:

This is the view that you get when you wake up 3:30 in the morning and cover the first 5.5 km of your hike in near darkness…

The ridge is incredibly spacious – one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.

About to start the descent down into Wall Lake again…

Some days it seems like a lifetime ago, but not so long ago Jordan and I were colleagues. Actually for a little over two years, we taught in adjoining rooms at one of the middle schools here in Airdrie. Jordan started out as a teacher a year before I did and so had already figured out a lot of things when I came on the scene at the school. He gave me the lowdown and helped me to survive that first year of teaching, which can be pretty grueling. I was pretty excited when he approached us back in the fall to cover his and Carolyn’s wedding.

The girls got their hair done at the very nice Hedkandi Salon near Eau Claire.

Both Jordan’s and Carolyn’s mothers were beaming throughout the ceremony!

Normally I don’t post anything from the family portrait sessions when I do up the blog post, but this one was too much fun to resist! I think it is Jordan’s father’s face that does it for me!

No tinging of glasses at this reception! If you wanted them to kiss you had to pull a message from a bottle and follow the instructions. Here Jordan’s sister attempted (less than successfully I might add) toe keep a hula-hoop going while Carolyn egged her on.

But of course, they kissed anyway.

The full range of emotion was covered through the formal program – lots of tears…

…and lots of laughter.

And then they let us steal them away for a few minutes before the dance.

This is my favourite from the day.

And then the dancing began!

Thanks guys! We had a great time!

So apparently it’s Stampede here in Calgary. Of course, we completely forgot this small detail last night when we asked Stefanie and Dennon to meet us down at the Talisman Centre for their engagement pictures. Apparently Stampede changes the cost of parking from free to $20! Oh well. The pictures are, well… it’s pretty hard to go wrong when you have a great looking couple who are seemingly completely at ease in front of the cameras. I say seemingly because they claimed that they were nervous. I am not sure that I buy it though, but I’ll let you be the judge

Last week while covering a corporate event at the Calgary Zoo, Duane and I had the opportunity to listing to Michael Keating give one of his amazing presentations. For those of you who don’t know of Michael Keating – he is a world-famous naturalist and quite an accomplished outdoors man/photographer/traveler. I had the privilege of hearing him a number times when I was a teacher, and was thrilled to get the opportunity again. I don’t think it is possible to go to one of his presentations and leave uninspired. All this is, by way of preamble, is to explain why Duane and I both rejigged our schedules to get out hiking this week. Unfortunately, our wives didn’t have the same day off so we ended up hiking on different days. Duane and Karyn headed out to Grotto Canyon on Monday and Leah and I went with her folks to the Lake Louise area.

Duane’s Favorites:

My Favorites: