Keep It Surreal

The silhouette of Mount Baker looking holy in the rising winter sun.

The rising sun sneaking in under the overcast horizon.

The illuminated behind the masts of the sailboats moored in Coal Harbour.

The morning sky starting to light up across the calm waters of Lost Lagoon.

Dawn breaks in the skies above the Inukshuk on the English Bay coastline.

The Engagement Rings return to English Bay for the 2010 Olympics. The artist Dennis Oppenheimer also created The Device To Root Out Evil, an upside-down church that proved too controversial for a park in Coal Harbour (unfortunately).

The setting sun lighting up Vancouver’s skyline against the fading silhouette of the Coast Mountains.

The fiery sky above Queen Elizabeth Park’s gardens.

The Vancouver skyline’s little towers dwarfed by the Coast Mountains at sunset.

The jaw-dropping view from Queen Elizabeth Park, the highest lookout in the city of Vancouver at 501 feet above sea-level.

Clouds hanging atop Mount Baker’s volcanic dome.

This is my first time-lapse sunset from my place in English Bay. It consists of 879 photos taken in about an hour and a half one evening in late August. I strung the image sequence in Quicktime Pro and then I added Moby’s great song Hymn as the background music.

If you haven’t been to Mount Baker you have to go. It’s only a two hour drive from Vancouver and it offers some of the best alpine scenery in North America. In the winter, the Mountain Baker Ski Area gets obscene amounts of powder (in fact, they set the world record for ski resort snowfall in 1999 with 95 feet!). And to sweeten the pot, lift tickets run from $35-$45 which makes it a lot better bang for your buck than Whistler Blackcomb.

In the summer, the entire Mount Baker recreation area offers an incredibly scenic drive and all kinds of hikes in the upper alpine. The highlight is Mount Shuksan 9, 127 feet which many mountaineers claim the most beautiful peak in the Cascade Range. The alpine lakes around the recreation are provide excellent reflections, with Picture Lake attracting herds of tripod-wielding camera enthusiasts.

Coming back from the last day of the Mountain West Music Festival at Whistler, we pulled over at the Tantalus lookout to watch the amazing sunset.

This is my favorite peak on the Sea to Sky Highway, it looks like it would be an intimidating mountain to climb.