An all-night Northern Lights road trip
Just after 9:00 last night, taking my puppy out for a short walk turned out to be the start of a very, very special night. At that time, there was just a small aurora borealis display showing on the north-eastern horizon.
After bringing Bella back in the house, I posted a note to a Yukon Aurora Alert page that I set up on Facebook, got my camera gear together, and, still dressed in my pyjamas so I didn’t miss what I expected would once again be a brief show, went out in the driveway and shot a dozen or so images. I came back in, posted one of the photos on Facebook, and when the display was clearly getting better, decided to go for a drive.
I shot this in the back yard in case the display quit while I was en route to my favourite photography spot, the Yukon River Bridge at Km 1393 on the Alaska Highway (that’s about 17 km – just over 10 miles – from my house).
The bridge area offers a lot of variety in possible shooting locations. It takes patience if you want a vehicle, or lights, in your photo – there’s very little traffic on the highway late on a winter night. This was shot at 10:18.
The lack of traffic means that I can set up my tripod in what would be a driver’s normal viewing position on the highway, even for 30-second exposures. Thirty seconds, though, feels like a very long time when you can hear a vehicle coming!
One of the places near the bridge that I always visit on my aurora shoots is a bluff high above the Marsh Lake Dam, or Lewes Dam. The orange lights in the distance are the lights of Whitehorse, the purplish light to the right is from the dam. The vertical shaft of aurora light in the centre is very unusual.
It takes a very strong auroral display to be visible over the lights from the dam!
My “itinerary” for the night was open – while I had told Cathy that I’d probably be a couple of hours, she knows that that is a very flexible number 🙂 I headed down the Alaska Highway, taking a few shots looking north along Marsh Lake at the truck pulloff at Km 1376. The streak of light at the lower left is almost certainly a small plane taking off from the Whitehorse airport.
Further south along the Alaska Highway towards Jake’s Corner. The red glow on the snow is from my car’s taillights.
Before getting out of cell phone range, I pulled up the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center site to see what they thought the night might look like. Excellent – an all-nighter coming!
Reaching Jake’s Corner at 11:40, I turned off the Alaska Highway and headed back towards Carcross on the Tagish Road. This is a loop that I enjoy in any season, in/on any vehicle 🙂
There was an excellent aurora display as I neared the Tagish Bridge, a spot that I had high hopes for. There’s a lot of open water there, though, and with the temperature sitting at -23°C (-9°F), there was also a lot of fog, and the Northern Lights had changed to just a glow by the time I got a fairly clear view of the sky.
The stunning view to the west on the Tagish Road at Choutla Lake, at 12:46 a.m..
The viewing deck over Lake Bennett at Carcross. The focus is off – more than once, I’d forgotten to re-check to focus ring every time I set the tripod up (auto-focus doesn’t work in conditions like this – you have to go manual, and because it’s so dark there’s no way to check whether you have it exactly right) 🙁
I shot this in Carcross specifically to post on the Cadillac page on Facebook 🙂
The moon rose at about midnight, and even at 80% full it has enough power to dull the aurora quite substantially. This was shot near the Bove Island viewpoint on the South Klondike Highway at 1:35 a.m..
Looking south down Windy Arm at the historic Venus Mine. By this point the aurora was simply a bonus to an incredibly beautiful night. I hadn’t see another vehicle in well over 2 hours at this point.
This is where I turned around – the boat launch on Tutshi Lake at Km 64.3 of the highway, at 2:30 a.m.. By now the aurora had changed to a fast-moving, vaporous sort of cloud – fascinating to watch but impossible to photograph because of the combination of low light and fast movement.
I drove past Emerald Lake, then decided that the auroral light might have just enough power in it still to photograph, so backed up to get this shot.
I got home at 4:00 a.m., and Monty was happy to share his basement couch with me so I didn’t wake up Cathy and Bella. While I really wanted to go through the photos I’d shot, I was absolutely exhausted. I got about 2½ hours sleep before I heard Cathy getting ready for work, so an afternoon nap is planned for a bit later today!
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