Friday, March 11, 2016

The Wonders of Winter at Fortress Lake

It's hard to believe that it's mid March and the mounds of snow outside our front door are still 6 ft tall and the temps are ever so slowly getting closer to average for this time of year. Winter seems to have stayed on longer this year and despite most of us wanting to see it melt, the snow itself has brought some beauty with it. A few weeks ago, we headed into Fortress to do our annual winter trip to shovel snow off the roofs of our cabins and Yurts to keep them safe and secure.The day we went was cold. The temperature was -32 to start our day and it only got up to a balmy -26 as a high. It was cold, but the sun was shining and the wind stayed away for most of our day, which made it bearable.
It was the flight in and the flight back that made this day so memorable. We left from the Springbank airport this year in our friends Cessna 185, and proceeded to fly west towards the Rockies. The path our pilot, Steve took was incredible. The mountains were looking the most dramatic I've ever seen them in the winter. Over the course of the day we must have flown over 80% of the tallest peaks in our Canadian Rockies and some of the largest glaciers in the parks. Some of these mountains seem like old friends, for the number of times I have either driven past, seen them from the air or hiked them. To see them so heavily layden with snow and to get the birds eye view above them on such a winter day was  a treat for the eyes. Mt. Columbia,Clemenceau, Tusk, Assiniboine, Storm, Alberta, McCarthur, Temple, etc. Many of you who have spent time in the Rockies will be familar with many of them. Seeing Storm Mountain Lodge from the air bought back some old memories from the summers back in my 20's when I used to waitress there. The other neat memory came when our pilot few us past Abbots Hut, which is highest mountain hut in our Rockies.
We arrived at Fortress to find a fairly typical snow load on the cabins, so our shovelling efforts went smoothly, which gave us some extra daylight hours and time to sitesee from the air. Steve, our pilot was keen to fly over the Clemenceau Icefield and a few of the other major glaciers that hang in that same general area, and make his way to Golden to fuel up before heading back to Calgary. Turns out, this little side trip involved a stop on a glacier at about 10,000 ft. Amazing stuff. The video tells the story well of our day. More fun with our fish eye lens.

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