I enjoy my solitude, but some times you just need to get together with friends and go out and have a good time.
That was the idea behind a recent trail run on the “TransAlta” road and into the Ghost River area of the Canadian Rocky Mountains.
We met up in the town of Cochrane Alberta and counted 30 Jeeps along with 1 Toyota Four Runner and hit the highway for the drive out to the trail. Surprisingly, the trail we were heading to is the ‘back end’ of Lake Minnewanka – an area I was just exploring a couple of weeks previously.
Stopping just out side of the trail area, we met for a brief safety chat about the few minor obstacles and continued on deeper into the trail.
A couple of fairly steep hills were on the initial drive in, but nothing our Jeeps couldn’t easily handle.
Once we made it into the bottom of the canyon, we had a brief stop for photos and to discuss the plan for going deeper into the canyon, along the river bed.
We pushed on followed the trail along the sides of the river. A few minor water crossings were required, but there wasn’t anything too deep to be worried about here.
As usual, the Rocky Mountain scenery is simply spectacular, so I managed to stop briefly and grab a few photos:
I’m still running in ‘auto mode’ on the Nikon camera, but starting to play with different settings. I think these shots turned out quite nicely.
We made it to the end of the trail, and stopped for lunch. Some decided to stay here a bit longer, and some of us decided to leave early for the long trek back to Edmonton.
Check out the photo gallery on Flickr here.
For the full collection of videos, you can watch below or jump to Youtube for the playlist. The “dash cam” shots are from the GoPro and the water crossing tire videos are from a Panasonic point & shoot.
