Winter Solstice in Whitehorse, Yukon
I’m sure that you’ve all heard the stories about how dark and dreary winters are in the Far North – some of you may even believe those stories 🙂 Today I’d just like to give you a brief look at what December 21st was like in Whitehorse.
I had a few errands to run in town, but I also had some shooting to do, with this blog post in mind. The first photo was shot out the front window as I was getting ready, at 09:21, with the temperature at -21°C (-6°F). That’s slightly below the “normal” temperature for the day, but still quite reasonable compared to the record lows for this time of year, into the -40s (Celsius and Fahrenheit are the same at -40).
At 09:37 I was on the Alaska Highway about half-way to downtown Whitehorse. My plan was to do some photography up to sunrise at 10:08, then do my errands.
The wonderful pre-sunrise colours over the Yukon River at the southern edge of downtown made this my first stop at 09:48.
From the same spot as above, the SS Klondike peeking through the “steam” off the river was worth a few shots.
At 09:55, I was up on the Long Lake Road and took a lot of photos of various parts of the city. The temperature had now dropped a couple of degrees, to -23C (-9F). I had planned on shooting the sunrise from here, but discovered that it would rise out of sight to the left. The mountain is Golden Horn, which Cathy and I live at the base of – it looks like a volcano, but isn’t.
I posted the next photo on my Facebook page, and it’s turned out to be the most popular photo I’ve ever posted there. In its first 24 hours on Facebook, it’s nearing 550 “shares” – to say that it feels really good to get that sort of response is an understatement 🙂 Click here to open the large Facebook version in a new window.
A final shot from that viewpoint, looking down the Yukon River, with Shipyards Park the nearest point on the far side of the river.
At sunrise, 10:08, I was back at the SS Klondike. This doesn’t look much like sunrise, but because of the extremely shallow angle that the sun rises at, it takes a long time to be visible.
My plan had been to be back at my sunrise-photo spot to get a photo at noon, then another at sunrise, but while I was doing my errands, it clouded over. As I was nearing home at 11:11, though, you can get an idea of how high the sun would be at noon (not very!).
I hope that helps people see that it’s not as dark and dreary as they might think in the winter 🙂
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