Kootenay Krusher 2011 @ Nipika

Yesterday WAS the last day of summer. Today it was definitely fall. It was chilly, windy, cloudy, sunny, rainy ... all in a 3 hour time frame.

Believe it or not, we didn't get rained on by this squall:


The Kootenay Krusher is a 50km cross country mountain bike race, based out of the beautiful Nipika Mountain Resort.

My photography skills took a leap forward today on several levels: For the first time I was totally comfortable adjusting focal length up or down while I was taking photo's using back button focusing, in the 5 seconds or so it took each rider to pass my vantage point. Also, with the constantly changing lighting, I found myself adjusting exposure almost without thinking about it! Woohoo, maybe I'm actually on my way to being a professional photographer!

I'm really tired, so there's just one race photo at this point - this chap was the first past me ... whether he actually won the race, I don't know:


I'll be posting more photo's to the Smugmug gallery this week. I took almost 600 photo's in a two-hour time frame, so I think I caught everyone!

An interesting aside: The best lighting conditions (ie: not in deep, dark forest) on the course were along a ridge beside the river. Or rather, above the river. This is a pretty good view of what I saw when I looked down to my right ... no idea how deep the canyon is, my guess is between 50m and 75m.


Another shot of the canyon, showing the incredible rock formations along the wall of the ravine.


Oh, another thing I learned today: My quick release plate (connects my camera to the tripod) doesn't "bind" to the camera properly. Even when using just the 24-70mm lens, when I tried to take a series of shots for hdr processing, the lens did a slow dive, resulting in unusable images. Just another reason that I need to upgrade my tripod and its accessories!

PS: I forgot to mention: We heard from a couple of bikers "be aware there's a grizzly up there" pointing in the direction we'd come from, where our car was parked. Let me tell you, it is very different having the possibility of a grizzly encounter when one's at least 30 minutes' hike from the vehicle ... than it is from being safely in that vehicle! We never did see what turned out to be a juvenile grizzly that was being a pest ... thank goodness!