Snow, snow and more snow

Never would I drive in such a snow-covered landscape! Difficult enough to see the road in my image and, as you can see, you can't tell where the gravel road ends and the snow-filled ditch begins. However, this is part of the area where a small group of three of us spent the day, on 5 January 2014, covering one quadrant of a huge circle around the town of Nanton. It was their annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count. Though it looks like there would be no birds to be found, we were lucky to see two Golden Eagles and two Bald Eagles, plus a number of smaller species. There is always a view of the distant Rocky Mountains from this area, and they look so amazing early morning with the sunrise pinks on the snow-covered peaks. The photo above was taken after the alpenglow had disappeared. Lol, on the hour's drive S from Calgary, we hit -34C (-29.2F)! Cold!