Spreading Creek Wildfire

We were traveling up Highway 93 through Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies and had crossed the Saskatchewan River when we noticed smoke from a forest fire over the river and country to the east. Just beyond the river Highway 93 intersected Highway 11 and we decided to travel down Highway 11 to see whatever was visible of the fire. We were warned that there was a lot of smoke and that we should drive carefully. After traveling through an area where we could see the remains of the fire in the distance we saw helicopters with buckets scooping water from a nearby lake and dumping it on the fire not far south of the road. We stopped to take pictures of the copters when suddenly the wind kicked up and all of a sudden the fire was roaring in the trees right next to the road and we could feel the heat. It was obvious that the fire was coming toward us and we got away as quickly as possible. As we left we found that they were closing the road just to the west. We later learned that the fire had been started by lightning on July 3rd and actually did burn into Banff before being contained. The fire is now known as the Spreading Creek Wildfire and continues to burn though it classified as "contained." This is one of the last pictures we took before driving away.