When you go to the Canadian Rockies, home to Banff, Jasper, Yoho and Kootenay National Parks, there are endless absolutely incredible sights to see. The most famous scene is probably sunrise at Moraine Lake. Lake Louise is a very popular spot as well. If you depart the Banff area and head up to Jasper National Park, Maligne Lake can be a fantastic photo spot. Unlike many of the top photo spots in the Canadian Rockies, there is no overnight lodging within 45 minutes of Maligne Lake. By the time the sun sets at Maligne Lake, most visitors to Jasper National Park prefer to be back in town shopping, drinking, partying or catching some zzzzzzz’s for more adventures the following day. As a result, Maligne Lake can be a nice peaceful and absolutely spectacular sunset photo spot. Like many other spectacular photo spots, lots of things must all come together to get a shot like this. For better or worse it doesn’t happen.
In order to get a panoramic sunset photo like this at Maligne Lake, you’ll need the following things to happen:
- You’ll need light cloud cover in the west where the sun sets.
- You’ll need perfectly calm winds in order to get reflections of the boathouse and the surrounding mountain peaks.
- You’ll need to hope no boaters or kayakers come paddling back to the boathouse right as the sun sets.
- Canadian geese and other birds enjoy the environment at Maligne Lake. You’ll need to hope they don’t come in for a landing as the sun sets.
- You’ll need to hope no rock skippers show up at sunset to skip rocks and cause ripples in the water if you do get a calm night.
- In order to get the best possible shot and a nice red roof on the boathouse you have to hope Parks Canada or whoever is in charge of maintaining the boathouse has cleaned the last year of bird poop off the roof of the boathouse. A roof covered in bird poop won’t ruin the shot but it certainly looks better with a nice deep red roof.
What are the odds of all those things coming together at once? In my experience not very good. Not very good at all. Lots of people like to kayak at Maligne Lake. They often come back around sunset. Maligne Lake is a relatively high mountain lake and it is quite large. It is often windy and cloudy in the evenings. If you can keep a bit of commotion along the shoreline where you are shooting you may be able to discourage that local birds from landing by the boathouse but not always. Lots of people, particularly those with kids are much more interested in skipping rocks than taking in perfect tranquil views they don’t know how lucky they are to witness. There is nothing you can do about that.
How many evening trips did it take to Maligne Lake to get this shot? Probably about 40 over the course of 5 or so years. Every time I was in Jasper I’d look at the weather forecast. If the predicted wind speed was below about 10mph and relatively clear, I’d make the 1.5 hour round trip drive to Maligne Lake and hope that everything would come together. It almost never did but on this evening everything was perfect.
After a full day driving and hiking around Jasper, the hourly weather forecast showed calm winds and partly cloudy skies and no precipitation. If you are going to go to Maligne Lake for sunset calm winds and light cloud cover are the two things you need to watch the weather for. It had already been a long day and I really didn’t feel like making the drive particularly since sooo many things have to fall into place to get a shot like this. As the pandemic has shown us, you never know what will happen tomorrow so you better make the most of today, particularly if involves travel.
So I hopped it the car and headed up to Maligne Lake. It was about an hour before sunset when I got up there and there were only a handful of other people up there. A few more came and went. With about 15 minutes to go before sunset, things were not looking good. The winds was almost dead calm. There were no incoming birds or kayakers and not rock skippers. The clouds to the west, however were blocking the sun. I’d all but given up hope of any Maligne Lake magic and was ready to pack up and head back down to the town of Jasper.
With just a few minutes to go before the clock said the sun would be set, rays of sunlight began to shoot through the clouds and light up the mountain peaks. IT WAS ON! The winds stayed perfectly calm, so calm that the wording on the historic Maligne Lake boathouse could be read in the reflection in the water. With the panoramic setup in place, I started cranking out panoramic shots from a location that would put some of the lake in the foreground, position the historic boathouse between the mountain peaks and provide a slightly elevated view.
After a few shots there with the mountains still glowing I moved down to the water level and captured a few more shots of just the glowing mountains reflecting in the calm, cold waters of the lake.
This shot looks phenomenal at a large panoramic print. It looks amazing on metal, canvas and as well as a matte type paper. Though it will be cropped it looks great on a weekender bag and the boathouse makes for a very cool puzzle.
If you want a shot at an amazing and somewhat unique photo from Jasper National Park that makes a great piece of panoramic wall art, this is a great spot. As noted above, it will take a lot of luck and a fair amount of late night driving to have a change to get a shot like this.
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