River Ice, Trees, JNP

Our friends Tom & Louise owned a house at Folding Mountain Village for a time and would often let my wife and I stay there when they were at their Edmonton home. It was a lovely place just minutes from Hinton and the park gates. On one such occasion in late February of 2001, I went up on my own for a weekend. As it turned out it was a bitterly cold one, -25°C for the high both days. This photograph was taken just inside the east park boundary off of Highway 16 and was a bit of a challenge. I had to get back in the van frequently between steps to warm up! So the process went kind of like this...get out, look at the scene and decide where to set up and focus the camera, get back in the van to warm up. Get out, set up & focus the camera, get back in the van to warm up and wait for the frost on the camera ground glass to dissipate. Get out, load and expose film, break down the setup, get back in the van to warm up and carry on looking for more photographs. The notes that I kept at the time tell me that I took another photograph at this location just before this one and there’s a half hour time difference between the two. It’s not unusual for it to take 5 to 10 minutes to set up for a photograph but this was on a whole different level.