I met Holly, Jon and Lennon a little over 2 years ago when they asked me to photograph their family photos. We did them in the most hilly area I know of.. Big Valley, which is North of Neepawa Manitoba. It’s what they like to do, hike and explore the outdoors.
A couple months later I did some fitness photos for Holly, and learned she was a fitness trainer. It kind of sparked me that maybe I should get into shape a little myself, and I can say I have her to thank for the approx 20 lbs I have lost from some of her workout programs since then! Check her out here is your wanted to explore some fitness programs yourself! https://www.hollypetersfitness.com/
Then, just about 6 months ago(?), Holly said, when are you taking our wedding photos? It had to be somewhere cool.. She doesn’t seem to want to do things the way more people do haha! So, we thought, how about a hike to Ball Hill in riding mountain national park? That was the plan, we were going to do it, and her or Jon would carry little Lennon the entire way. About 2 months before we planned the wedding photos, things changed again, and it was decided that we were going west, and were hiking a mountain….
And so we did.. I am in ok shape, and Holly and Jon are both certified trainers so I figured… we got this haha!
It was 4:45am and pitch black outside when we left the Coast Canmore Hotel, and then by 5:30 we were parked on the side of the highway, in the pitch black with nothing more than an Iphone telling us we were beside Grizzle Peak.. we couldn’t see it with our own eyes yet though. I am not going to lie, hiking “Grizzly Peak” had me slightly concerned for bears… Luckily we didn’t run into anything..
We turned on our headlamps (still pitch black outside) , and Jon’s “alltrails” app lead us up the side of the mountain. There were times when we all thought, ok, this is enough. Let’s stop here. A time when Holly had to take 10 minutes to find the mental strength to scale the side of a cliff, but we did it. About an hour in we started to be able to see as the sun slowly came up over the Rocky Mountains. It was such an amazing experience, it really makes you feel so small in the world. It took us about 2 hours, 2.3km (each way) and went up close to 900 meters to get to the peak.
When we got to the top it was snowy, windy and cold, so we only shot for about 5-10 minutes at the peak, but it was so worth the insane hike.
The following day we got hit with a huge storm.. around 8-10 inches of snow! We planned to head to Moraine Lake for some more photos, but unfortunately the road was closed so we didn’t make it! We did however find some other pretty cool little spots not too far from the town of Canmore!
Thank you guys so much for bringing me along on this amazing adventure. It was definitely an amazing experience!
Enjoy your preview! You’ll see many more soon!
Congrats!
Mark
