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Most of my spare winter days are spent on skiing, so once in a while I'd have some treasure hunting fun in my hard drive, and this is one of them from the glorious summer time in the Canadian Rockies. This was shot from the helicopter departing the incredibly beautiful Assiniboine looking toward Marvel Lake (the blue one) Valley surrounded by Mount Gloria, Eon Mountain, Mount Assiniboine, and Aye Mountain, all these peaks resting on the border of BC and Alberta.

The first ascent of Eon Mountain (the sharp pyramid-shaped peak on the far side of Marvel Lake) made on July 15, 1921, by Purdue University president Dr. Winthrop Stone ended unfortunately in a tragedy. Dr. Stone fell to his death after summiting Mt Eon and his wife was stranded on a ledge below the summit for 7 days without food until rescued (see butlerlink.com/Biographies/Stone/WinthropStoneDetails.html or www.aupress.ca/books/120169/ebook/17_Sandford_2010-Ecolog... for a very good reading.

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Polar bear mom and possibly a COY (cub of the year) walking on newly frozen pond near the Hudson Bay in early morning, waiting for the sea ice to freeze and their return journey to the north.

Every summer the Hudson Bay sea ice melts completely and the bears have to come ashore where they wait months until the ice re-freeze again. Polar bears’ main prey is the ringed seal, and can only be hunted when it surfaces to breathe at openings in the ice - Polar bears rarely catch seals in open water. Therefore the bears face lean times when they are on land.

Normally the freeze-up starts early November, and the Polar bear touring season ends around November 20th (since all the bears will be gone once the ice is firm enough to travel on). This year (2010) the ice didn’t start to form until a month later, and there are still many bears stranded on shore at this moment. These bears haven’t had any good meal for 5 months now.

A female that mates during the summer digs a den late October. Cubs are usually born around Christmas or New Year. Feeding on mom’s milk, they emerge from the den in March. By then mom would have been fasting for 8 months.

While we saw mostly healthy bears and not all the bear populations are declining around the globe, no one is certain if this magnificent creature will survive global warming.

Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS + 1.4xTC, 280mm 1/320s at f/6.3, ISO 3200.

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Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS, 70mm 1/40s at f/8, ISO 400.

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In my subconsciousness this is what an autumn morning looks like.

We woke up in total darkness somewhere in the east end of Telluride, packed, broke camp, and had a quick hot soup to warm the stomach. It’s Sunday and possibly the last weekend this year that I’ll wake up in a car, a tent, or a motel. But before all is said and done we had 400 miles ahead of us and a few places to visit.

These places are like old friends to me -- we first made acquaintances in 2005 and I was mesmerized like a child in Disneyland for the very first time. And I still am after 5 years.

Wilson Mesa, about 20 minutes from Telluride, is my Shangri-La. A few houses/ranches lightly dispersed underneath Mt. Wilson, it’s much less crowded than other nearby locations. We chased the transition of night and day when the first sunlight melted the frost and cast the warm light onto the leaves. I didn’t care much about rules and compositions but just followed my déjà vu.

Canon 5D Mark II, EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM @400mm, 1/320 sec at f/5.6 ISO500.