Harrison Hot Springs Resort and sunset light on the Mount Cheam Range. Photographed from Harrison Lake at Harrison Hot Springs, British Columbia, Canada
A few weeks ago I posted a blue hour photo of Mount Cheam and the town of Harrison Hotsprings. While that photograph may well turn out to be my favourite from the day, it was not really what I was after when I set out. Pre-trip research using Google earth and other photographs on the internet can only get you so far – sometimes you just have to go somewhere to see what is there. This was certainly one of those days.
Through my trip planning and time spent in Google Earth and a few other applications, I had thought I would be able to make a photograph that is somewhere in between the one above, and the one posted earlier. The grand plan was to photograph the Mount Cheam Range above (directly above) the Harrison Hot Springs Resort with some night sunset light. A few things would have had to occur for this to happen. 1) A place to stand where those two things line up and 2) nice light at sunset. So I set out up the Whippoorwill Point Trail along the western side of Harrison Lake in the hopes that the point near the outflow of the Harrison River from the lake would provide this angle. I had climbed about 200 feet or so up the hill before I realized that this was not a place I would want to climb down in the dark, alone, and with some ice on the trail. It also seemed completely possible that I would be able to walk along the lake shore and get to the same area with less actual effort. The water in the lake seemed fairly low, and water along the shore itself was frozen (though I didn’t really test how much so with my body weight). So I walked on the “beach” past Whippoorwill Point to Sandy Cove. I then walked further along the water and rocky shore towards the Harrison River. I wasn’t able to make it to the river, but it was clear that this would have been a moot point anyway. The way the shore curved, I was losing more and more of my view of Cheam Peak. The best spot turned out to be just south of Sandy Cove. It was from there that I made the photograph above.
The photograph I had hoped for (I try to avoid the term “previsualized”) turned out to not actually be possible without a boat. I would not want to try to photograph in early February on a boat on Harrison Lake anyway, even without the high winds and cold I faced. There are plenty of other angles on Mount Cheam I have on my list of places to check out. Stay tuned for those!