The blog
Equal parts exhilaration and exhaustion
A couple of nights with opposite forecasts. “Clear” and “mainly cloudy”, but they meant the same thing, as they usually do… Skepticism of forecasts and predictions, and a subsequent chase into clear sky.
Still they fill me with exhilaration, and equal parts exhaustion.
Dramatic weather is nothing new to Whitehorse, but a few days above freezing at the end of January flipped the city from the most beautiful, hoar frost covered, crisp white winter wonderland into the quintessentially ugly northern spring of gravel, brown slush, and icy deathtraps.
Now, a week or two later as I sit here and write this, heavy snow finally falls outside blanketing all the frozen brown slush after a night of ice fog sat over the city. Low cloud covers the mountains and the sky is just an endless, flat grey tone.
It’s the cosy winter days I dream of.
The most beautiful part in all of that above freezing mess was the melting of so much snow on the lakes. Puddles formed and refroze, reflecting gorgeous colours and intensities of light from the aurora.
The ice became the loudest I’ve heard this year. All through the night, the lake sung in the deepest tones; a constant companion through the -33° night.
A meditative state
Sitting out on the counter from a late, late bake the night before were some 5-minutes-too-long-in-the-oven scones.
In the morning now, snow just fell and fell and fell from low, overcast cloud. It seemed like every time I looked out the windows, the clouds had gotten lower until none of the mountains were visible at all.
It really was just the cosiest homebody kind of day, where the 11am sunrise blurs into the late afternoon sunset, and my cosy window lights never lose their glow against the sky outside, and we were supposed to be going to the mountains.
We easily agreed to delay 24 hours, leaving plenty of time for a new batch of scones to be over-baked, however I didn’t. Sugar was still nowhere to be found, and these couldn’t be completely inedible, I was mostly pretty sure.
Aside from having to dodge a snowplow a few times, waiting a day was just the best decision. Hot coffee and heartfelt conversation filled the car as we travelled deeper into nature. Fast moving clouds, mountains of snow, and cold, but not frigid, winter air on my face brought back so much Norwegian nostalgia. Time passed far too quickly, and soon we were stumbling down a snowy hillside in the dark.
Sometime while I was sleeping in the late evening after our heavenly afternoon and getting warm drinks ready just before 11pm, the skies had mostly cleared.
Instinctively upon waking up, I look skeptically to the sky in search of cloud banks, double checking weather maps, looking for where the other shoe is going to drop from. I think that’s the years and years of chasing clear sky, obsessing over the weather night after night, for 9 months of the year. But that other shoe wouldn’t come tonight, we were in the clear all evening, but as ever, that’s just half our story.
“Good, but calm. And it would be nice if things were a little bit more unsettled.”
With the weather as close as we come to worry free in Whitehorse, it was onto the aurora conditions which were good, but calm. Full moons in the middle of winter always give some challenges, as beautiful as they are.
We waited as long as we could tonight in the company of the occasionally heard singing ice of the lake. Careful steps out onto the shore cracked the ice under my feet. It was equal parts alarming as calming. There is something so special about the ice. An early morning flight departure eventually brought us back into town. Despite squeezing every last minute out of our clear skies tonight, the aurora remained quiet. Gentle, but beautiful low across the horizon.
A place beyond belief
In quiet conversation and deep trust
I knew leaving Whitehorse we were in for a long night. Weather maps showed hope, but far, far out. So we drove, and drove and drove and drove.
Our first stop around 100km from town was under quickly disappearing clear sky, but it was our first little taste of the stars and some diffuse aurora. I updated maps and continued further to where it looked like what our eyes could make out on the horizon and the weather maps were in agreement on - a large, relatively stable for Iceland Whitehorse, break of clear sky.
I think our timing tonight could not have been more perfect. It was the kind of timing and circumstance that makes you believe in the pure magic of life. Within minutes of stopping under our clear sky, the aurora danced and danced and danced all around and above us, and continued on until morning.
I can never overstate just how much I love these chases. These nights of powerful weather… the mountain scenery, snowy highways and cold, cold winds are some of the most special moments of life.
Making every second count
Seeing the first seconds of pink sunlight touch the peaks of the Kluane and St. Elias Mountains confirmed to me that setting out from Whitehorse deep, deep in blue hour was the exact right decision.
The days are among some of the shortest of the year now, and the beauty of Kluane extends further than perhaps any other time of the year. The forever low and golden sunlight emphasizes that. You know by now my obsession with light and ice.
Our entire day felt almost eerily quiet with very few passing vehicles. The forests felt predictably quiet - a few squirrels, a lone gray jay, and a grouse couple that, as ever, sent my heart into my throat with their chaotic helicopter takeoff hidden in a tree. Then, closing in on darkness, a herd of somewhere near 100 elk off both sides of the highway halted our plan of a late visit to a lake along the way back home in favour of taking our time loving on all our new furry friends.
These are the best days, the ones of magical light, majestic views, and of making every second count.
Ever humbling
It wasn’t the curtains, all the beautiful structure, the dance or the luminosity. It all felt surreal, humbling beyond reason still.
It was the reds. It was the reds visible to my eyes, in real time. It wasn’t needing a camera to identify them first and then recognize a difference in hue. It was in real time the most beautiful red colour which has alluded me for so long, so many times over the last 16 years. I don’t remember the last time I saw them in this fullness… I don’t know if I ever had.
