About This Web Site

We were snowed out of our planned Thanksgiving weekend hikes in Waterton Lakes National Park and headed North to look for alternatives. I remembered the Whaleback Region from enthusiastic reports by my friend George Newton. It's located a half-hour northwest of Pincher Creek just off Hwy 22.

This website is my photographic record of a hike on the Beaverdam Creek Ridge in the Bob Creek Wildland which is a small protected part of a much larger region known as the Whaleback. We spent a wonderful fall day enjoying the open grassland ridges and the twisted Limber Pines -- one of the most beautiful tree species that I've seen in the wild. My focus was largely on the limber pine because of its unusual quality and because the threats to its existence in Alberta and elsewhere.

The photographs on this site are Photoshop manipulated. The Photoshop software applies many of the modification techniques used by darkroom processing including cropping, contrast and color control, etc. In addition I've used some of Photoshop's unique filters to 'painterize' the images. So you may notice that they are less sharp than traditional photographs and that there is a painting-like quality to them.

I'd like to thank George for his recommendation, Joyce Hildebrand for accompanying & guiding me on the trip and Conservation Officer Michael Taje for providing advice about particular hikes.

And I'd like to thank the various conservation organizations that worked so hard to ensure that special places like the Bob Creek Wildland will be protected from development. Those organizations include:

• Alberta Wilderness Association (AWA)
• Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS)
• Nature Conservancy

If you are interested in more information about the Whaleback Region, visit the links page.

~ Ray Rasmussen

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