A starry night along the South Klondike Highway
As I start writing this at 04:30, I’m up on the Haines Highway just north of the summit. I stopped here on my way north after 2 days and nights in Haines. As expected, it snowed overnight – there’s 2-3 inches, so it should be beautiful when dawn arrives in an hour or so.
Before I tell you about Haines, I want to tell you about an aurora hunt a week ago – on Friday, April 12. It didn’t produce any aurora photos, but I shot a few photos of the amazing sky full of stars above some notable sites along the South Klondike Highway.
I was hoping, judging from the aurora forecasts, for the last good aurora show of the season. I decided to start at the historic Robinson Roadhouse, where I arrived a few minutes before 11:30 pm. The main roadhouse building has a fence around it during some renovation work so isn’t any good for photos, but some of the outbuildings looked great in the light of a half moon.
The old and the new – the 11:30 Air North flight descends into Whitehorse. Historic sites have a very different feel to them at night – perhaps the spirits of some of the people who lived at these places still visit.
Very pleased with the photos I got at the roadhouse, I continued on to the Carcross Desert. The snow-capped peaks sure stood out in the moonlight. There was a chilly breeze, but the temperature was very nice – about -7°C.
I probably have hundreds of photos shot at the Bove Island viewpoint in all seasons, including many aurora photos.
The historic Venus silver mine mill was as far as I went to the south. It was now 01:00 and my hopes for an aurora show were fading.
On the way home, I stopped at Carcross, mostly to kill time in case the aurora showed. I thought about walking down the beach away from the community’s street lights (what a waste of resources those are), but the breeze made me decide not to.
By 03:00 I was home in bed, dreaming about the next adventure starting on Monday – 8 days at Haines and Kluane Lake. 🙂
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