First Camera Set-Up

So my first camera set up was at Sulphur Mountain, Banff National Park. It was a nice easy day with only 2 cameras to put up along the trail. I was working with Breda, a volunteer from Ireland.

The day didn’t start off as planned when I got a message from Sarah, who had set off earlier for her camera set-up, saying that the camera kit wasn’t there. I emailed the ladies who had done the previous set up to see if they had got it but no reply.

By this point it is 9am and i was meant to be meeting Breda in Banff at 8.30am. So I made the decision of heading into town to meet her. By now it was 9.30am, i met Breda and we decided to head over to the coffee shop and use the WiFi to see if the ladies had replied. The coffee shop we chose had terrible WiFi so checking emails didn’t happen. After all this i decided to go home and check my emails, and to my surprise i had a reply. I went to fetch the kit and off we went, back to Banff to start out set-up.

By the time we started it must have been going on 11pm. It didn’t take us long till we reached the spot the first camera was going to be placed, ~600m from the trail head.

Breda setting up the first camera

View of first camera

To set up the cameras we needed to find a good tree to tie it too which would get the best view of the hiking trail and any wildlife trails in sight. All the settings are good to go on the camera other than the camera name and time&date which was changed just before we put up the camera. We then had to mark the GPS location in the GPS unit (so that whoever is collecting the cameras know where it is) and also to write all the details in the field guide; trail name, camera name, GPS location number, which side of the track, distance from the trail head, and any other comments that will help with the camera collection.

Was a beautiful but hard walk as the mosquitoes where out in force that day. Every time we stopped we were surrounded!!

The next camera was get up approximately 3km from the first camera. As we were getting closer the the 3km mark, the trees were getting more and more scarce!! We managed to find a tree good enough to put the camera on so we set it up and off we went back down the trail.

Here are some of the beautiful views on the trail….

 

All in all it was a very successful day 🙂