The Golden Ears mountains as photographed from Brae Island Regional Park in Langley, British Columbia, Canada.
Golden Ears Mountains and the Fraser River
-click to enlarge-
Last week I visited Brae Island Regional Park near Fort Langley, BC. I have found with previous trips to this park that timing can be important. My first visit there was mostly noteworthy for the vast quantities of mosquitoes I encountered which allowed me to break a personal record for bites in one evening (50). I guess late May is not a good time to visit. I was able to photograph at the various viewpoints of the Fraser River on my trip there one year ago without any mosquito action so I headed there again this year at about the same time – early September. I didn’t get to see a great sunset, but I did like this scene that I photographed from a viewpoint just east of Tavistock Point. The panorama above shows the Golden Ears mountains (Mount Blandshard) and Mount Robbie Reid (right) which are a familiar sight from the Fraser Valley (especially Langley and Maple Ridge). The Golden Ears are formed by McPhaden Peak, Edge Peak and Blandshard Peak. The majority of the trees on the other side of the Fraser River are in Kanaka Creek Regional Park (in Maple Ridge).
Despite the general lack of mosquitoes this trip was not free animal intervention. My walk to Tavistock point took about 25 minutes from the parking lot. The way back took me about 35 minutes, and it had little to do with the darkness. I had a flashlight out, but despite that there were so many frogs out on the trail that I had to go pretty slowly to avoid stepping on them. A recent windstorm and the dry summer also left a lot of dry, crumpled cottonwood and alder leaves on the trail, which were hard to distinguish from the frogs against the crushed gravel. I stopped counting at around 35 frogs but I don’t think I stepped on any, luckily.
Visit my Fraser Valley Gallery for more photographs from the Fraser Valley.