Skip to main content

Day 5 - To Avalanche Lake

Lake McDonald

Today we discovered that the hotel does not have breakfast,  and the most useful breakfast place opens at 7:30AM. I personally would have liked to have been out already heading to the park at 7:30AM or in the park, since parking spots at popular trail heads fill up quickly.   We had breakfast at Glacier Highland Cafe, which was ok, and reasonably fast. From breakfast it was to the park, with the first stop being the visitor center.   

For those that don’t know, Glacier NP went to a ticketing system for park entry, so unless you are staying at one of the lodges in the park you need a ticket, which is good for 7 days.  Tickets went on sale on May 28th;  we got ours that day and we were lucky to get one,  they sold out within an hour for all dates from June to September.   Entering the park was fairly easy, before the actual entrance they had three rangers/volunteers checking to make sure you had a valid entry ticket before you even got to the entry gate.  Once we were through the gate we headed to the Apgar Visitor center, to pick up maps and get my park passport validated.  Our first mini hike was over to Lake McDonald along the hike and bike path.  We walked briefly along the lake before heading back to the car to drive to Avalanche, which is the farthest you can go on the “going-to-the-sun” road from the west side.  The road will probably be closed for another two weeks still as they finish up plowing. 

We arrived late to the Avalanche Parking area, so to speak but we're lucky we only had to circle once before finding a parking spot, this is why you need to arrive early.  We got our stuff out of the car and started the hike which was a combination of two paths, the “Trail of Cedars” which is a 0.8-mile loop and the “Avalanche Lake” spur which is 1.9 miles one way with an elevation gain of 500ft.  The Avalanche Lake trail is rated a moderately difficult trail  with several ups and downs, and really not for those with walking issues.  However, I saw several older people (I’m guessing 70+ since they were talking about air drops during the war) on the trail with their hiking sticks and just taking it slow.  Jim is always in the lead when hiking,  he just walks faster; but was surprised that I ended up second, it usually is Bill.  In a turn of events he was taking up the last position.  His wife was even walking faster than him and she is usually the last one.  All I can say is the stair stepper machine I had must actually work.   By the time we completed the hike it was about 2:00PM and we needed to find lunch since we did not have lunch out on the trail (poor planning).  We ate at the Lake McDonald Lodge, which was doing take out only.   That basically ended our day at the park.  
Avalanche Lake

After returning to the hotel room so Jim could change shoes we went over to the outdoor store so I could pick up a hiking stick (a slick stick as my dad would say).  I determined with the up and down and the uneven surfaces I needed one, so I wouldn’t come down so hard on my knees when walking and it will provide me with a bit of extra balance in some areas.  It is not that I can’t balance but it should just make it safer and easier.  We also stopped to pick up some stamps for postcards at the post office and then attempted to stop at the Canadian Visitor Center right outside of Glacier NP, but it was closed.  So that concluded our day.  Tomorrow we may get up early to try to get some sunrise pictures.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2024 Year in Review and Looking Forward to 2025

This year felt a little off for me; I think it was because I was in a mental recovery mode.  I finished my graduate program in June and immediately went on a week-long vacation to Palm Springs.  I do not recommend Palm Springs in June; way too hot.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but the graduate program mentally and physically exhausted me, which I think showed in some of my creative work.  But being able to work with great people like Natalie Hanrion , Coralinx Cosplay , and Anastasia B kept me motivated.  While I didn’t attend as many Cosplay Photo Shoot events as in the past, the ones I did attend were helpful in keeping the creativity flowing.  I also took some time this year to reflect on a few things and will be making some changes for 2025. In 2024, I shot 6241 frames, which is a 30-percent decrease from last year.  I edited 3187 frames, which is a 40-percent decrease from 2023.  I think this year, I started focusing on being very min...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Optical Spot

The weekend of November 16 th , I got a little ambitious and did four sessions to test out the Lindsey Adler Optical Spot .     I originally rented the optical spot from LensRentals , but that session had to be rescheduled; however, I didn’t want the rental to go to waste, thus a TFP weekend. For this session, I used: Photography Equipment Props/Miscellaneous Cannon R6 24-105 mm Lens Transmitter/Trigger 2 Phottix Strobe 2 FJ400 Westcott Strobes 1 Optical Spot 2 strip boxes 1 bell reflector grids 2 C-stands 2 light stands Sandbags Backdrop stand Savage Fashion Grey Seamless Gobos Gels Spyder Color Checker Card A-clamps Star filter Red Curtains Posing stool     The set up While I did four shoots in one weekend, the lighting setup was basically the same for all four sessions; what changed was the gels and the gobos.  I started with a fashion grey seam...
Post a Comment
Read more

Whispering Waters

On July 19th, I drove up to Poughkeepsie, NY to attend the Whispers of Waterhouse photo event held by Everlore Events . This was an all-day event, which included a light lunch, vendors, arts, and crafts areas, and three different styled shooting locations.  I was one of the roaming photographers for this event, which means you work with models who are not currently working with a featured photographer (who have schedules), and can wander between all three shooting locations at your convenience.  For this event I used: Canon R6 1 Speed light Trigger Umbrella Gels 24 - 105mm lens Camera Settings: This was an outside shoot that had sets in heavy forested areas, out on a pond, and sunny meadows; thus, I was adjusting the settings to the lighting conditions.  I used ISO 100 and 400.  My goal was to keep my aperture around f/4 to achieve a nice background blur; however, depending on the conditions, I had to stop down to f/9 and f/11 to manage the light...
Post a Comment
Read more