About This Website

Welcome. My name is David Wasserman. That's me in the picture, on the Helen Lake Trail. Except for that one, I've taken all of the photos on this site. Three of my favourite hobbies are hiking, photography, and computers. This site represents the convergence of those hobbies.

For years I've been hiking in the Canadian Rockies, and taking photographs. I've been showing these prints to friends, and then stashing them away in a file cabinet drawer or a cardboard box. "What do you do with your photos?" one of my hiking buddies used to ask. Well, now I've got an answer. I'm making the best of them available on the Web for anyone to see.

I hope these pictures, organized by area and identified by trail name, will be interesting to those who are planning a hike in these beautiful wild places, those who have hiked there and want to be reminded of what they saw, those who would like to hike these trails but can't, and those who enjoy nature photography for its own sake.

I haven't hiked every trail in the Canadian Rockies, and I haven't photographed every trail that I've hiked. These Illustrated Hiking Trails are necessarily incomplete. If the trail you want to see isn't here, I'm sorry. In years to come, I hope to walk through many more miles of backcountry, and preserve reminders of their beauty on film or memory card.

All the pictures from before the year 2000 were taken with a Canon FTb, most with a Canon 28 mm lens, some with a Canon 50 mm normal lens, with or without extension tubes, and a rare few with a Bushnell 135 mm lens. Photos from 2000 to 2005 are taken with a Canon Rebel 2000 camera with a Tamron autofocus 28-200 mm zoom lens. Most are from print film, either Kodacolor 100, Kodak Gold 100 or 200, or Kodak Royal Gold 400. Photos from 2006 onward are taken with a Canon Powershot S2 IS digital camera.

I've done my best to identify all terrain features, plants, and animals correctly, but I have no training as a zoologist or botanist, and only a little at map-reading. Assume the correctness of names at your own risk.

My friends have admired many of my photographs (that's why they're friends!), but to me the pictures are always a little disappointing, no matter how well composed or exposed they are. I remember the real thing. No picture can capture that experience.

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