We saw our first wolf pack in the winter of 2001 near Lake Minnewanka in Banff National Park, Canada. It was at dusk in quite a heavy snow storm. We managed to get a bit of footage of the pack on video, but it was impossible to take any pictures. A year later we saw one lone wolf in the Bow Valley. In the winter of 2004 we first saw three members of the Decoigne wolf pack (a pack we'd photographed in the summer of 2002, see main wolves picture page), then within three hours we were totally taken by surprise by the Medicine Lake pack. In all these cases I was unable to take any pictures with my analogue photo cameras and slow lenses.
By talking to park wardens on our trips we have come to realise how unusual it is and how fortunate we have been to see so many wolf packs (one warden told us he had never seen more than two wolves together in his entire 27 year career working for Parks Canada). These pictures - taken from our videos - may not be good quality shots but they do represent some of our wolf encounters. There have also been many occasions where we have not been able to take any shots or video of the wolves as they quickly ran accross the road in front us or through the woods by our side before disappearing within seconds.
was in medicine lake 6 years ago going back to hotel and a pack of 10 to 12 wolves walked right past my cat the alpha pair was grey and whiet had 2 black that were beautiful was one of the most amazing things i have ever seen both my cameras were dead had a little battery life on my video got maybe 2 minutes of them because we saw 4 moose that day went on glacier boat ride what was even better the last night before coming home they were in the bushes they started howling could not see them but it was so loud and then another pack miles away started howling also