Seeing the Northern Lights in Alaska for the First Time

That spring break, I went to Alaska with several friends to see the northern lights. It was the same group from the earlier Mexico trip, and we maintained our usual standard of questionable planning.

We first spent a few days in Anchorage. This was so long ago that I have completely forgotten what happened there. I only remember that nothing went dramatically wrong.

Then we flew to Fairbanks. The plane was tiny, with exposed propellers rather than enclosed ones, and it was the smallest aircraft I had ever flown on. It rocked and rattled as though it might come apart at any moment. Evidently, it did not, and we landed safely.

From there, the trip became one mishap after another.

The first arrived as soon as we left the plane. We rented a car that would cost a little over $600 for those few days, but this rental required payment by credit card. Debit cards were not accepted, much less cash. We had not encountered that requirement when renting in Anchorage, and I had no idea why this place insisted on a credit card.

We then discovered that among the four of us, we possessed exactly one credit card. Never mind credit cards: between all four of us, we had one Social Security number. Given our circumstances at the time, getting another credit card was not especially easy. The lone card belonged to me.

It was my first credit card, with an extremely low limit. My philosophy at the time was to use it for the month, wait for the statement, and pay on time to build credit. The ideas of managing utilization or paying early had never occurred to me. I checked and found that I had only a little over $300 available—not nearly enough for the car.

I made a payment on the spot, paying off everything the system would let me pay, and brought the available credit to a little over $500. Everything else came from purchases during the previous few days and was still listed as pending, so I could not pay it yet. We were still short.

We asked the employee whether there was a cheaper car. She said no; this was already the cheapest. We were stuck. Then she suggested that perhaps there was a way to make this car cheaper. After working through the reservation, she told us that she had removed every optional insurance and protection that could be canceled. If we rented only the bare car, the price would come down to a little over $500. I checked my limit. It was just enough. Once the charge went through, my remaining credit was in the single digits. We could hardly have cut it closer.

One important form of rental-car protection is a Collision Damage Waiver or Loss Damage Waiver. Put simply, if vehicle damage falls within the terms, it can spare the renter a great deal of trouble. We had neither.

And so we drove away in a car with none of the optional insurance or protection. I estimated that the car itself was probably worth twenty or thirty thousand dollars. If we actually crashed it, even an ordinary repair might cost thousands. Our attitude was that it would probably be fine. We were young, fearless, and apparently willing to drive off under those conditions.

In fact, one option would have been to call the credit-card company and ask for a temporary limit increase. Since I was short by only a few hundred dollars, perhaps they might have approved it. But I was completely new to credit cards—and the other three did not even have one—so there was no way I would have known to try.

The car had four-wheel drive. As events proved, for the way we wandered onto whatever road looked interesting, 4WD in an Alaskan winter felt less like a luxury than a matter of survival. Once, we drove into a small snow hollow on a road. It was only about half a wheel deep, and precisely because it was small, we failed to notice it before driving in. Once inside, we could not get out. We tried every reasonable method and several unreasonable ones, including the idea of putting bricks under the wheels. The main flaw in that plan was that we had no bricks.

The other three got out to push while I worked the controls. After more than ten minutes, the car had not moved. We were completely baffled. Somehow, not one of us thought of calling roadside assistance. That may have been fortunate; without any extra protection, who knew how much a call would have cost us out of pocket.

Then one friend noticed something useful: for a four-wheel-drive vehicle, why were the rear wheels not turning? Only the front wheels were spinning in the hollow. Was this thing really 4WD? We examined the controls and discovered that it could be switched between front-wheel drive and four-wheel drive. We had been driving in front-wheel-drive mode the entire time. We switched to 4WD, pressed the accelerator, and drove straight out.

So what exactly had we been doing for the previous ten minutes? Also: four-wheel drive really worked.

I drove for the entire trip. The reason was simple: among the four of us, we could produce two driver’s licenses, and one of those was a piece of paper. Its owner had not driven since passing the test. Would you have handed him the keys to a rental car stripped of every optional protection?

The road I remember most clearly was the one to a hot spring in the mountains. For perhaps twenty or thirty kilometers, its entire surface was ice. Yes, ice—not snow, but snow that had long since been compressed into solid ice. Once you have driven on that, ordinary snow begins to seem wonderfully manageable. We definitely had no snow chains; I no longer remember what kind of tires the car had. We simply gritted our teeth and kept going.

With that particular car under the conditions that day, it might begin sliding above 30 km/h. Above 40, it would usually start to slide and then become completely unresponsive until its speed dropped. We lost control several times along that road, which was more excitement than I wanted. I did not dare make sudden steering inputs. I simply tried to keep the car steady, and somehow managed to recover it each time. Fortunately, the road was nearly empty, leaving enough room for us to slide without my having to turn sharply. I drove the entire trip without an accident. Looking back, that seems rather impressive.

One day, we went skiing at nearby Moose Mountain. It turned out to be about as wild as an Alaskan ski area could get. Chairlifts? Apparently not. To reach the top, you boarded a bus at the bottom and rode it up the mountain. Getting back down? That part was up to you.

As complete beginners, we had somehow assumed there would at least be guardrails along the runs. There were not. The runs themselves were broad enough, but guardrails simply did not exist. Need to slow down before leaving the run? Hit a tree.

Knowing absolutely nothing about skiing, I used this emergency braking method several times. Its principal drawback was that it could kill you. Fortunately, I was moving slowly enough whenever I hit a tree. There was also one occasion when I struck a tree and, somehow, both skis remained attached to my feet. I was stuck—completely stuck. I jabbed desperately at a binding with a ski pole until it finally released, and I was free again.

In short, Moose Mountain was far too wild for beginners like us. We did not even have goggles. We did not have gloves, either. We simply went ahead anyway. Youth does have a remarkable talent for bad decisions.

The four of us got off the bus at the top with absolutely no idea what we were doing, then began making our gradual way downhill. At first the run was fairly level, and we even started to think we were doing all right. But beginners are beginners: we could not even read the trail signs. So another classmate and I followed that gentle run straight onto a black-diamond run. The easy opening seemed to exist solely as preparation for one enormous final drop, as if the entire vertical descent had been saved for that last pitch.

On the flatter run, we could still brake by hitting trees. That was no longer an option here, because we could not even stand up. The slope was so steep that I did not need skis at all. Wearing only the ski boots, I could crouch down and immediately begin sliding at alarming speed with no control whatsoever. To stop, I had to sit down—and be careful not to roll straight down the mountain.

Eventually, we found that the only way to keep from sliding was to hold our ski boots against the snow in the same braking position we would have used with skis on. We pushed our skis beside us and inched down the mountain. Meanwhile, children barely tall enough to reach our waists flew past at high speed, some of them skiing backward. I have no idea what they thought of the two adults scraping their way downhill.

After nearly an hour of determined effort, the two of us reached the bottom alive. There we found the third member of our group, who said something had felt wrong almost immediately, as though they had twisted an ankle, so they had turned back, taken the next bus downhill, and waited for us. The fourth person was still missing. We decided to wait at the bottom. For our own safety, we also unanimously decided not to go back up.

About half an hour later, the last person appeared. Clearly the most athletically gifted among us, they had successfully found the proper beginner run and had already completed several trips down it.

In the end, all four of us left alive with every limb still attached. It had not been easy.

The final event I remember clearly was the night we drove out to see the aurora and nearly scared ourselves to death. The online forecast said there might be activity, so we set off. Where were we going? We had no idea. Our plan was to leave town, find some hill at random, drive to the top, and look up.

That is exactly what we did. At the top of a small hill, we found a house. We got out and pulled a camera and tripod from the car. The homeowner came outside. From more than ten meters away in the darkness, we could not see what he was holding. One friend walked over and asked whether we could briefly use the area in front of the house to photograph the aurora. Everything went smoothly, and we stayed there taking pictures for quite a while.

But when our friend returned, he told us that he had not seen clearly either, but thought the homeowner might have come out carrying a gun.

On reflection, that would not have been hard to understand. From the homeowner’s perspective, a car had driven onto his private property in the middle of the night. Four people, all apparently adult men, got out and opened the trunk as though they were retrieving equipment. Would that make you nervous? If the homeowner really had come outside with a gun, his caution would at least have made sense from his point of view. Meanwhile, my friend had simply walked straight toward him. If he had mistaken us for threatening intruders, who knew what might have happened.

If what he was holding really was a gun, our little operation was fairly alarming in retrospect.

We saw the northern lights—or perhaps we did not, because they were very faint. With a thirty-second exposure on a proper camera, the photographs clearly showed colors across the sky. To the naked eye, however, they were barely visible.

In the end, the trip concluded safely. The car was fine!