This photo of Mt. Rundle was taken from a popular viewpoint on Tunnel Mountain. The summit elevation of Mount Rundle is 2949 meters (9673 feet). This picture shows the north end of Rundle. Mount Rundle is very large; it stretches 12 km south to the Canmore area. The stream in the foreground is the Bow River. The valley bottom is about 5000 feet lower than the summit.
I think it is very difficult for a photographer to convey the scale of the Canadian Rockies in a photo. The tendency is to use extreme wide angle lenses (here about 13 mm on a 1.6 FOV crop CMOS sensor in a Canon Rebel XT) to include the entire scene. While that strategy is widely used, it usually has the effect of diminishing the scale of the landscape.
Like a lot of mountains in the Rockies, Mount Rundle is very steep and cliffy on one side, but rises more gradually on the other. It is also very accessible from Banff and pretty high, so Rundle has become a very popular "scramble". Scrambling has become a popular sport in the Rockies. A useful guide to the sport is Scrambles In the Canadian Rockies by Alan Kane.
Ash Creek Images
Photographs of the West by Doug Gorsline
Dawn Highlights the Cliffs of Mount Rundle Above the Bow River at Banff.
