In a few days, I’m getting up really early and travelling to a nice wooded location with a small lake to put into practice some new things I’ve learned about capturing a sunrise. The weather in Ontario has finally stopped sulking and temperatures may actually go a little above normal for the first time in forever.
With some non-bone chilling temps and a sunrise that is still reasonably late (somewhere between 6:30 and 6:45), all I need is a mostly clear sky and I’m off to the races. I’m planning on heading up to the Pine River Provincial Fishing Area about 20-25 minutes north. I will have to step through the cold stream to get in position but it should be worth it. I might even capture some wildlife. Who knows.
The thought of setting up this little photographic excursion made me remember some sunrise shots I took a few years ago. Actually, it was on my birthday in 2011 (October 10). I wanted to usher in my birthday in some sort of spiritual way so I headed north to Boyne Valley Provincial Park, just south of the Pine River Fishing Area.
The thing is, I planned to put these images up on the website about three and a half years ago. The pictures got transferred to my external drive while doing a backup at around that time and kind of got forgotten.
Boyne Valley Provincial Park is non-operating park in Ontario. This means, there are no facilities whatsoever, just a plot of protected land. Therefore, Ontario Parks does little to promote the location.
The park is located along the Niagara Escarpment and the Bruce Trail runs through the heart. One of the centrepieces is a bald knob of a hill called ‘The Pinnacle’. A speck of dust compared to mountains and hills in other parts of the world but for my area this is a bit of a spectacle.
The Pinnacle, because of its treeless summit, is a great place to watch a sunrise. As for the Boyne River, it empties into the Nottawasaga River, which in turn empties into Georgian Bay at Wasaga Beach.
I enter the park from the west. This means parking along a quite stretch of little used country road, next to a steep incline on the northwest side of the park. This also means that the sun might rise at a certain time at the top of the Pinnacle but it gets light much later at the heavily wooded bottom of the hill.
This means… it’s one dark hike to get to there before sunrise. Yes, I get a bit spooked walking through a dark wooded area. In fact, there’s something about the wooded areas of this park that can spook me during full daylight.
As you can see by the images, I made it. The added bonus of arriving at the summit before daybreak is the wildlife. White-tailed Deer are plentiful in the area and I was treated to several literally crashing through the scrub below.
This was a long time ago in my photographic life. There are things I would definitely do different and plan to do different this week, weather permitting. I would have worked with bracketed images and I would have taken some video!
Below, I was able to find some mushrooms along the Bruce Trail. I wasn’t quite prepared to head home after the sun was up in the sky so I tripped around the park for awhile. Mushrooms are one of those things that are often hard to find in Southern Ontario, unless the weather cooperates.
Because it was mid-October, the fall foliage was at its best. Below is a farm field that sits directly adjacent to the Bruce Trail. At this point, the dark wooded area before the road is about to begin.
