Waiting for the Northern Lights

I was back in Fairbanks. After landing, we headed straight for the hot spring hotel.

I had learned my lesson from my previous stay and booked just one night. With such poor internet and no phone signal, I had no idea what I would do with any more time there. This time, though, we found that connectivity had improved dramatically since my visit years earlier.

The Wi-Fi actually worked. On my previous visit, it had been Wi-Fi in name only. Now there was an actual internet connection. An unexpected development.

We stayed for one night. The weather was bad enough that we saw no northern lights. We barely even saw the sky.

The hot spring experience was not as good as I remembered, mainly because it was not cold enough. At night, the temperature was only around −20°C. Out in the wilderness around Fairbanks, this was practically tropical. On each of my two previous visits, the nighttime temperature had been around −40°C.

As a result, we could not recreate the Super Saiyan hairstyle I’d managed on my previous visit. Back then, at around −40°C, hot spring water on my hair froze quickly and locked it in place.

But −20°C was simply too warm. The water cooled too slowly, so the hairstyle needed hands to hold it in place. Above the water, it was not cold enough to keep everything standing on its own.

Transformation failed.

Over the next few days, we tried various activities during the day and went looking for places to watch the northern lights at night.

We visited a privately run reindeer farm. Those antlers!

We were told that some reindeer here liked to fight, and that the troublemakers had their antlers cut to keep them from injuring the others. Otherwise, apparently, they would end up breaking them in fights anyway.

We also booked a dog-sledding trip. Proper dog sledding, covering a substantial distance—not the sort of experience where someone hands you a dog and a plank, takes you a few steps, and calls it a day. Before coming, we had debated dog sledding versus snowmobiling. Dog sledding won. No profound reason; it simply sounded like the more unusual experience.

Once again, the location was in the middle of nowhere, with very little phone reception.

Most of the places we drove to over those days were like this. That seemed to be the general arrangement for outdoor entertainment around Fairbanks. Our four-wheel-drive SUV was once again making a persuasive case for itself.

When we arrived, a member of staff took one look at our down jackets, insulated pants, and winter boots and apparently concluded that we had dressed rather lightly. He explained that the ride would be extremely cold and that we needed extra protection. Each of us got a larger pair of insulated pants to pull over our own, oversized insulated waterproof overboots, and a hat. We emerged as heavily armored tanks.

Dog sledding does, of course, require dogs. First, we visited his dog yard.

So many dogs. So much energy. And all of this was outdoors.

Alaskan sled dogs are something else. It was only −20°C that day, but I knew from previous visits that temperatures could drop to −40°C or lower. These dogs lived out in it. Clearly, they had not signed up for the sofa edition of being a dog.

Then the dogs took us on a sled ride through the wilderness. We must have covered several kilometers, with this view the whole way.

That evening, the sky looked clear, so we decided to go out in search of the northern lights. There was a website forecasting the strength of the aurora each day. You could choose to trust it. The trouble was that it seemed to keep its higher numbers under lock and key: almost every forecast was weak unless something genuinely strong was coming. It was not necessarily wrong. But if a weak forecast kept you indoors, you might never see anything, because weak was the usual state of affairs.

We reached a lookout sometime after ten that night. There were already quite a few cars and some people. “Some” is the important word: this was an ordinary outdoor lookout, not an organized tourist attraction. It never became a crowd, which made the experience rather pleasant.

The forecast had kept those higher numbers firmly locked away for days. Based on my previous Alaska trips, there was a good chance this entire visit would also consist of weak auroras. We decided to stop negotiating with the forecast and go watch anyway.

We stayed from around ten until one in the morning, and the wait actually paid off. Around eleven, the aurora put on a small burst of activity. By ten, clouds had already appeared, and things had briefly looked rather unpromising. But the clouds gradually blew away, revealing a clear sky.

For about thirty minutes, the lights were clearly visible to the naked eye. Even an ordinary phone camera could capture them.

Please excuse the photographic style, somewhere between magical realism and Impressionism. This was about as much as I could ask of a phone. The pictures do at least make one thing clear: the sky lit up that night.

We returned to the hotel very pleased with ourselves and went to bed.

To finish the trip, we boarded the Aurora Winter Train from Fairbanks to Anchorage, traveling through a landscape of snow.

Taking a scenic train through beautiful country had become something of a tradition. The scenery on this route was excellent. Away from the train, seeing this sort of wilderness would mean driving ourselves, which sounded like far too much trouble.

There was plenty to look at.

That evening, we arrived at the station in Anchorage, headed straight to the airport, and flew home.

A thoroughly satisfying end to our Alaska trip.