A large house on the shore of Harrison Lake near Harrison Hot Springs, British Columbia, Canada
Harrison Lake Waterfront Property and Fall Foliage (Purchase)
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I have been editing some more of my photo backlog and came across this photograph of Harrison Lake from 2009. This was one of those years with great fall foliage colours in the Fraser Valley. The leaves you see here are mostly Bigleaf Maples (Acer macrophyllum) which often turn a yellowish brown but on this occasion had great oranges and yellows (somewhat accentuated by the sunset light). I made this image in the Green Point Day Use Area of Sasquatch Provincial Park on the shore of Harrison Lake just outside Harrison Hot Springs, British Columbia. I don’t know anything about this particular waterfront property, but it does appear they have a great view!
For more of my photography from this area visit my Fraser Valley Gallery in the Image Library.
Harrison Hot Springs Resort and sunset light on the Mount Cheam Range. Photographed from Harrison Lake at Harrison Hot Springs, British Columbia, Canada
Harrison Hot Springs Resort and the Cheam Range at Sunset (Purchase)
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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!
Late evening light on the Mount Cheam Range and the beachfront condominiums at Harrison Hot Springs, British Columbia, Canada.
Mount Cheam Range and the beachfront condominiums at Harrison Hot Springs (Purchase)
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This past week I drove out to Harrison Hot Springs area to photograph sunset light on Mount Cheam. I had a number of locations in mind, and did some hiking, but it turned out my favourite photo from the day was this one. Photographed from Harrison Lagoon, these are some beachfront condominiums with the Cheam Range behind. The peaks visible in this photo are (from left to right) Stewart, Baby Munday, Knight, Lady and Cheam Peaks. Mount Archibald is the peak on the far right, but is not part of the Cheam Range. I have photographed Mount Cheam many different times of the year, but I think winter is my favourite. Cheam just takes on a different personality in the winter when there is a lot of snow.
You can view more photographs from this area in my Fraser Valley Gallery.
View of Harrison Lake’s Green Point looking back on the beach I was standing on in a previous panorama from 2009. This was an area I had hoped to revisit in the fall of 2010 for the color of the maple leaves, but this year had terrible leaf color and it was not to be. I feel somewhat better about that now that I am going through the 2009 fall shots I had not yet processed. Maybe 2011 will be better.
I would not complain if I had the view from this house every morning!
Some fall color at Harrison Lake in November 2009. Unfortunately we just didn’t have this sort of fall color this year. The leaves went from green to brown/dead all too often. Especially the Acer macrophyllum.
