Day 23 ~ Sunday 13th September, 2015 Fly out of Mt Assiniboine

Sunrise?? OMG – here I go again…. Up at 6am this time and out hiking with Chris back to the Tarne for sunrise. The weather had been due to turn and we awoke to very heavy cloudy skies and we were praying the rain that was forecast would hold off until we had packed up our tents.

Where was Steve? Yep – sleeping!! :)

Craig, Chris and I were at the Tarne. We had no idea where the others were, but assumed they were down at the main lake at Lake Mogog for sunrise.

We had a bit of wind, so the pond was quite ripply. The clouds were dark but were moving fast, so my 30 second long exposures were turning out ok.

Chris decided that sunrise was going to be a fizzer above Mt Assiniboine, when he had moved his tripod to another location as all the action was behind us, when I spied just a hint of pink in the clouds….. Chris frantically ran back and recomposed and then it was ON for 5mins.

We got some colour – not a lot, but something! We could hear screams of delight coming kilometers away from Lake Mogog and knew it was the OOAK gang! WOW – so happy with that!!!

We high tailed it back to the hut where Steve had already been up and packed up the tent when he overheard someone mention it was raining!

Those of us who got up early were really blessed with our images. Those who slept in were very disappointed with themselves.

But this is what photography and especially landscape photography is all about – you have to be out there and up early and out late – if you aren't, you wont ever see it, or capture it.

We ate breakfast and Steve wanted to head to the lodge early. We had to check in by 11am for the helicopter, and it was 9am now. It would only take us 40mins to walk to the lodge, if not less, but with the weight, we didn't want to be rushed.

Steve was really feeling it.  He has not slept well, he's not into Hiking with great weight and just the whole 4 hours of sleep a night has really taken its toll on the poor boy.  I am feeling for him.  I know he would have loved to have been 20 years younger and done this - he would have left everyone for dust..... getting older sucks!  lol  Then his heart started playing up, so that wasn't good, but luckily we were on our way down the mountain.

We made it to the lodge just before the rain hit (thank god). We got our chairs on the porch and took some more photos and watched as the other hikers and lodge guests also congregated there with their packs waiting for the helicopter. We had a very long wait as we were going to be groups 7 & 8 to fly out.

It was around 11am when Jimmy took a selfie of me, and he said “why are you shooting in JPEG?” - well I'm not I replied… but you are he said. WHAT THE F….??

Yep - Will must have changed a setting in my camera yesterday - by accident I am sure, and I was suddenly shooting everything in JPEG! To those who don't know, these are ok images, but you can't process them and get the real detail out of them in things like Photoshop etc. Everything from lunchtime onwards was basically rooted. I have never been so fricken angry in all of my life.

I am sure I can resurrect some of the sunset images and I hope to god the pink sunrise from this morning, but the milky-way shots are a waste of time. You have to do so much post processing to them, that they need to be RAW images.

Oh well – at least I have some record of the time here. Thank god the aurora images were all RAW – otherwise I would have cried – then killed people. So that put a real fricken downer on my day, but I got over it. I was lucky to have been there and taken images. I could have lost a memory card or it failed with no images at all, so it was all good once I calmed down.

This is how our morning looked at the lodge - reflected my mood at the time!

Our packs were taken by the lodge people up to the Helipad (we were very thankful we didn't have to hike with them further!) So Steve and I went up with them, just to make sure they made it on a flight etc.

Poor Steve had one of his heart episodes, which didn't make it fun, but it made us get on a flight out of there. Once again the view was epic but over way too quickly.

Here's our group shot of the OOAK gang just before we left the lodge.  

OOAK Canada Crew 2015 - Left to right:  Will, Brad, Clair, Jimmy, Tim, Sarah. Hannes, Craig, Chris, Shaun, Vicki & Steve

Once on the ground, we were packed up in the car and on our way back to Canmore as fast as we could drive…. We wanted a hotel room. So back to the Ramada we went, where we all booked rooms and some of us were allowed in straight away!

YAY – hot showers and hair washed and teeth brushed. God it felt great to be back with the luxuries we take for granted!! lol

Steve's heart was still mucking around, so he caught up on FB and then had a 2 hour sleep. Most of the others went out for a sunset shoot back at the Vermillion Lakes. Eh – wasn't floating our boat anyway, and it was raining here in Canmore, so Steve slept and I caught up on this blog as we are days behind!

We might have an early dinner by ourselves and then tomorrow we are off to 2 Jack Lake and then onto Calgary for our last night, which is all about shooting the Calgary Skyline.

Can't believe the OOAK part of the trip is almost over. Feels like we've been on it for months already, but yet it only feels like we have just started. We will miss our new friends we have made (even if some of them accidentally cause me to shoot jpeg – still love you Will!) xxx