Driving to an incredible Aurora Borealis display
On the night of March 17-18, I spent 11 hours driving 493 kilometers to experience one of the best aurora displays I’ve ever seen. The combination of strength, colours, patterns and movement were simply incredible, and just going through the 184 photos I shot to pick some out for this post has brought back some of the excitement of the night.
The aurora forecast was for a night of very high-strength displays, and photos I saw online from the night before were wonderful. But the skies in Whitehorse were cloudy. The closest report I found for clear skies was north at Carmacks, or much further east past Watson Lake.
I left home at 8:20 pm, 15 minutes after sunset. My plan was to simply drive until I found the aurora, though I had Five Finger Rapids and Eagle Rock (north and east of Carmacks respectively) in mind as shooting locations. It started snowing lightly just before 9:00 – the first photo was shot right at 9:00, at Km 215 of the North Klondike Highway (highway mileposts start at the ferry dock in Skagway).
The snow got heavier as I neared Fox Lake, and the road was bad enough that I started thinking about turning back. It’s not like this was something that I had to do, after all. I decided to keep going until Braeburn Lodge, as sometimes the narrow valley at Fox Lake holds storms and it’s better past that. Shortly after making that decision, I could see a thin bright band that indicated clear skies ahead. By the time I could see the lights of the lodge, pale aurora was also visible. Whoohoo!!
At 9:50, just a few hundred yards past the lodge (that’s the Braeburn air strip on the right), I made my first stop of the night to capture these wonderful colours. None of the 33 images in this post have been post-processed (“Photoshopped”) in any way. While the camera “sees” reds and purples better than the human eye does, these are all what came out of the camera, with no unusual settings/filters on it either.
Continuing north, I stopped a couple of times so I could show you what the drive looked like. When the aurora is this bright over the car’s headlights, you know it’s a very strong show.
I stopped at the ruins of the Montague Roadhouse, but the lights had disappeared. I stayed for a few minutes…
…and then noticed that the aurora was visible past some clouds ahead. This is the only photo of an aurora that I’ve ever taken with a telephoto lens 🙂
The aurora was gone until just before 11:00, when it returned even stronger than before. The bright line to the right is an airplane, not a shooting star – its track shows up on 3 photos.
A “roadside attraction”, Yukon style! This was shot at the same spot as the one above, at 11:05. There was virtually no traffic (less than 1 vehicle per hour), so I could shoot whenever and wherever I wanted.
At 11:35, I pulled off the road just north of Carmacks and spent a while shooting. I’d never seen such vibrant colours last this long.
Looking back at Carmacks. The sky to the south, the direction I needed to get the aurora over the town here, only lit up for a few minutes in the 11 hours I was out.
Right at midnight, I reached Tatchun Creek, the furthest north I was going to go. The trees at bottom left are along the creek, the highway going north can be seen just to the left of bottom centre.
The view to the northwest down the Yukon River from the same spot.
I went back to the Five Finger Rapids rest area and spent a long time shooting there, as planned.
A “selfie” at the Five Finger Rapids viewing deck.
One more Five Finger Rapids shot at midnight:45. Despite my patience, the aurora never did show to the southwest over the Five Fingers rocks. I next headed back south towards Carmacks and the Campbell Highway turnoff.
My exposure times and ISO settings were all over the map as I tried to keep up with the light variations. Some of the incredibly bright displays were shot at as short as 6-second exposures instead of my more common 30 seconds.
The next 4 photos were all shot between 01:00 and 01:30 on a few k stretch of highway just north of Carmacks.
Looking back at Tantalus Butte from halfway down the steep hill to Carmacks, the Yukon River and the Campbell Highway. I’ve done a fair bit of exploring the old Tantalus Butte coal mines over the years, but I need to do more this coming summer.
Looking to the east up the Yukon River from the same spot as above. The lights are at a home along the Campbell Highway.
As I drove east along the Yukon River on the Campbell Highway, the aurora faded, and was pretty much gone until 03:00 when a strong show gradually returned. My “base of operations” was 27 km east of Carmacks, at Eagle Rock, which is officially the Columbian Disaster Rest Area, with signs that describe the September 25, 1906 explosion on the sternwheeler Columbian that killed 6 people. The next 3 photos are looking down the Yukon River towards Carmacks.
I really wanted to get the aurora over Eagle Rock itself, but it was in that problematic southerly direction. With a broader view, though, Eagle Rock is seen to the right, the Yukon River to the far right.
At 03:30, the aurora got particularly strong again and I was firing off shots pretty much constantly.
Finally the display moved over Eagle Rock for just a couple of minutes and I got the shot I’d hoped for.
At 03:40, I shot some “selfies” at the Columbian interpretive signs, then packed up my gear and started the long drive home.
On the way home I stopped at Montague Roadhouse again, and after waiting a bit to see if any aurora would appear, had a nap. By the time I woke up, clouds had moved in, and by about 06:00, as I got near Braeburn Lodge, it had started snowing lightly again. Around Fox Lake, the temperature had climbed to near freezing and the road got quite slippery.
No wonder the car was starting to sound and feel a bit odd!
On drives like this, I always carry my Spot GPS tracker. Almost my entire route was outside of cell coverage areas, but it’s a big comfort knowing that I have a satellite-powered SOS button if I need it. As well as the “hidden” features like that, it broadcasts my position to a Web site that Cathy (or anyone else) can see. A screen shot from that site is seen below.
Well, that’s the story of my amazing night on the road. I am so incredibly lucky to be in a position to do silly things like that now 🙂
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