Day 18 - Tuesday 8th September, 2015

4.20am the alarm went off….OMG – starting to feel VERY tired now. Camping was fun and I slept like a baby for the 4 hours I got. Love my new sleeping bag and mat. I was as warm as toast. Poor Steve hardly slept, but was warm in his sleeping bag. Even though it has hardly stopped raining here, the temperature has increased. In Canmore and Banff the temps have been around 0 & 2 degree's during the day. Jasper has been 13 degree's – so considerably warmer.

So Tim, Steve, Shaun & I all headed off in the car for a 4.50am start back to Athabasca Mountain for sunrise.

After a good hours drive unfortunately, there was no sunrise to be had. We were at very high elevation, and it was rainy, snowy and heavy cloud. We waited for a while, but alas we had to abort.

We went down to shoot a waterfall just after the Icefields Skywalk which was right on the road. 

 Then we made it down to “Athabasca Falls”. We weren't expecting much as the photos we had seen were a big “blah”, but when we got there, it was quite lovely – lots of walkways and gorges. 

We got back to Jasper and caught up with the others after we had breakfast we headed back to camp around 10.30am. Steve and I were back in our sleeping bags listening to the rain fall by 11am, and we got a few hours sleep in, until we were woken at 1.30pm by the others who had returned, and we all went off to lunch.

All day we felt shattered – like we were heavily jet-lagged.

We made our way in the car with Tim and Shaun to Lake Maligne. Rain again (or still) – we lost the others – again. We got to the lake, and the rain just made it horrible. We tried to photograph a few things on the way back to town, whilst looking for the others. Looking for animals the whole way – Steve and I had our 200mm lens's on, waiting for the shot of Elk or bear. Yeah right – once again, no fricken animals were to be seen.

When we got back into Jasper and the others turned up for an early dinner, they shared their photos of the stunning Elk buck they got to see! ARGHH - never mind….maybe tomorrow?

The sky looked like it was breaking, so we were all heading back to Pyramid Lake for sunset again. I stayed in the same spot as the night before – as the composition was great. I would have loved to have shot the bridge, but that will have to be for another time.

The sky lit up finally after days and days of no colour, and we went back to camp, where we lit a fire and told stories and I finally got to take Steve off to sleep. We are both shattered big time – feeling our age amongst the youngsters here! Lol We had been up for 20 hours.