Sunday the 16th was the day before I was leaving The Hills. New snow had fallen overnight, disappointing the locals, who'd had enough of winter, but making everything beautiful again. I was happy with the development.

So after breakfast, I walked down the powdery tubing hill with my camera and long lens. I was looking for critters. One of the great things about new snow is that in new snow, all tracks are fresh tracks. And soon I found some fresh tracks, and that sent me off of the trail into the woods. I was careful where I was going so as to stay out of the deep snow, but there were still a few places where I misjudged (or had no choice) and sunk in a foot or two. Snowshoes would've been helpful.

As I was going through a small patch of trees, I spotted a dark form sitting in the shade under one of them, and snapped a few photos. Here's something close to the original photo, which is a little lighter than what I was seeing. Despite the sun being out, it was pretty dark under the trees.

And the fellow leaving those tracks is a hare...a Snowshoe hare, to be exact. I didn't see any hares while I was there, but I did see plenty of hare tracks.

At this point, I have to admit that I've been holding out on you. The tracks that I chased into the woods weren't squirrel tracks or bunny tracks. They were a bit bigger than that. They were moose tracks.

The first day I was at The Hills, I saw three moose on my morning walk, including what the guide said was a mother with a yearling. I had my camera with me, and I thought about maneuvering for photos, but I didn't want to hold up the group I was with. Besides which, I figured that if on the first walk of the first of fifteen mornings, I saw some moose, then chances were really good of seeing them again later.

This turned out to be bad figuring. Despite several sightings by other people, I had had no luck finding them again.

The fresh snow and the urgency of being on my last day had given me new hope for finding a moose. And I was buoyed by having found moose tracks, and having flushed something big. I just hoped it hadn't flushed far; there's no way I could keep up with a moose in these conditions.

So when I got to the trail, I went rightwards to see if I could tell where the animal had gone. Soon I saw some tracks crossing the trail in front of me, and I stopped to look at them. I hadn't really noticed, but right where I had stopped, there was another trail leading off to my left. As I turned to look where the tracks were leading, I noticed the other trail, and I noticed a big-eared thing standing on the side of it.

I slowly raised my camera, so as not to startle the beast, and I got my first moose photos.

I thought about following her, and then thought better of it. I was worried about the light. I was pretty much on the wrong side of the beast vis-a-vis the sun. To get nicely-lit photos, I needed to be on the other side. If I followed the moose, it would naturally keep going the way it was going, and I would always be on the wrong side. And believe me, the wrong side of a moose is not where you want to be. Especially if you're a photographer.

It didn't take too much reasoning to figure out that if I wanted to be on the right side of the moose, I would have to circle around. Luckily, I was just a little ways from the trail I had emerged onto earlier, which would take me vaguely in the correct starting direction. So I slowly slipped back onto that trail, and pressing on, I soon found another trail roughly paralleling the one the moose was on.

This was all good luck, but that soon ran out and I realized that I'd have to cut back through the woods to get back to where the moose was. With all the snow, cutting through the woods was slow going, and I worried that the moose would be gone by the time I got there. But I soldiered on.

It took me about half an hour to get where I was going. Half an hour is plenty of time for a moose to trot off, drop by the ski lodge, have a hot chocolate, hang with the donkeys down by the barn, and to generally be quite far away. So when I got back to the path, I was expecting to see no moose. And sure enough, there was no moose on the path. I was worried but not completely daunted; at least there weren't any moose tracks around where I was standing. The moose could've gone off the trail and could still be lurking about. So I cautiously moved towards where the moose had been, scanning the woods carefully.

Some head motion gave the beast away. In the woods, with all the browns and darks and tree trunks and branches, even a big animal like a moose can really blend in. One has to look carefully lest one overlook.

In that shot, and in the next one, the moose is not immediately obvious. In real life, finding a moose in the woods is much harder. I had 360 degrees of forest (with a significant range of distances) to search to find her. My camera's long lens makes it look like I was right next to her, but I wasn't.

The moose was taking her time, eating branches off the short trees or bushes. Moose have to eat a lot to keep their big bodies fueled...they can eat up to 20 kilos (45 pounds) of food a day.

After about ten minutes of not having a good angle on her, I started moving off-trail to get a better angle. After I was well and truly off the path and into the deep snow, the moose naturally decided to move along, back up to the trail. Luckily, I still had a relatively unobstructed view of where she did emerge.

That's one cute moose. And now I was definitely on the right side of the moose. From the other side, I would not be getting such good detail in her fur.

Once she had all four legs up on the trail, she paused briefly to look at me

I wasn't terribly annoyed by her skill at that, as it's a good protective strategy. And I had gotten some good shots, anyhow. I ended up liking many of the "through the trees" shots, as they have a really nice natural feel to them.

Here's one that shows that distinctive moose-shaped snout.

With that, she walked off a little deeper into the woods, and I decided not to follow. I knew I had some decent shots, and I'd been chasing her for an hour and a half. So I thanked her for being so nice and I moved on. I even made it back up to the lodge in time for my 11:00 exercise class.

That was all I shot on the 16th. On the 17th, my plan was to leave after lunch. So after breakfast I loaded up my car, and then I had about an hour to spend before my exercise class and lunch. It was a beautiful warm(ish) and sunny day, so I decided that a little walk with my camera was in order. I was pretty much striking out, and was about to call it quits, when the shadow of a largish bird passed over me.

I looked up to find the bird, expecting a crow, and was a little surprised to see something flaming red rather than black. A Pileated Woodpecker had just flown down to a telephone pole in front of me. And she was gorgeous.

I was only a little surprised because I had heard woodpeckers drumming throughout my stay at The Hills, and I'd even seen a pair of what I was pretty sure were Pileateds flying in the distance one day when I didn't have my binoculars with me.

But despite not being shocked at her appearance, I did enjoy it quite a bit. They're a pretty big bird, and have wonderful strong characteristically-woodpecker markings.

After getting several several shots of her back, I moved around to get side shots. The side shots didn't turn out as well, but they do provide a good look at the head markings. The next three shots show her holding her head at various angles.

I like that last one, with the reflection on the eyes that looks almost like sunglasses, and the rakish turn on her crest.

The woodpecker was my last subject at The Hills; exercise and lunch went as planned, and in the afternoon I was off, driving back down the Fraser Canyon. As I had stopped a lot on my way up, I didn't stop so much going back.

I literally stopped once on my way back for photos, getting three shots of a canyon wall.

The color combination there just appealed to me way too much for me to pass up.

After this, I was back to my working and relatively photo-free life in Vancouver. It would be almost a month before I was back out with the camera..

Trying to keep on the sunny side,
Tom