Aurora

Going to see the Aurora has been a bucket list item for years, as has the Rockies, with the peak in Solar Maximum around this year it was a perfect time for the long trek from Australia to Canada.

When the Northern Lights appear is of course, random, and it is subject to weather so any trip to see them needs other activities. A look around Vancouver and then the drive from Jasper to Banff heading Northward was perfect for this. I will write then up in other posts, for now, Vancouver is a very pretty city and the drive was just stunning.

After the incredible Icefield Parkway along the Rockies it was back in a small plane a long way North to the Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories.

Yellowknife is an Inuit town that grew bigger from mining, first Gold now Diamonds. With a population of 20,000 it isn’t huge but is the capital of the NWT. Stepping off the plane you are greeted in the terminal by a scultpure of what looks like a Polar Bear eating a seal – you get the feeling that life up here might be tough.

Even though we had a car we’d booked for an Aurora tour that night, thinking the guide would have the best ideas where to go – this turned out to be a great decision. At about 10PM we left the hotel onto the bus, the sky looked a little overcast and we were doubtful. We went straight to a perfect location over a lake, the clouds obligingly parted, the sun through out some plasma and the best show we could have imagined began.

The guide talked about the Inuit history and about some of the people, nothing much about the science. This was fine by me, I already knew the science and was much more interested in the coltural side.

After an hour or so the bigger busses started coming so the guide took us to another spot where the show even got better with the lights ‘dancing’ as the guide called it. I had always thought the videos with the light rippling were timelapse, not at all. In seconds waves of light passed overhead, split, rejoined and changed colour. Absolutely incredible, unfortunately I didn’t get any good videos but here is a taste.

The next few nights were largely cloudy so this night was really lucky.

Yellowknife itself is a little bleak, it is a very long way North and the city is obviously set up for extreme conditions. Many driveway had snowmobiles as well as cars, seaplanes were very commonly tied up outside houses and small saunas on the front lawns were everywhere. Winter average temperatures are around -23C to a balmy lunch time -13C plus wind chill, the coldest recorded is around -55C, not an easy place to live!

Food through the whole trip was interesting, we had expected lots of maple syrup and bacon, which we had in abundance, but it was mostly very like Australia. The exception, that no one had mentioned, is Poutine. It may not look like much, it’s basically hot chips, gravy, cheese and whatever savoury ingredients the bar wants to add. It is delicious!

I should also mention micro-breweries, they are everywhere. Whether your preference is beer, ginger beer, or any of the many types of soda people are making alcohol their are plenty in supply.

Then town itself is quite small and there isn’t a lot to do. It’s nice to have a drive looking around the old area, and it has a reasonable number of art galleries for it’s size – another sign of bad weather. I had read about quite a nice short hike close by, so we set off hoping to see Moose or a bear (from a distance!). The walk follows a creek and hit some very pretty waterfall, interesting birds but not much in the way of big animals. Some cool Caribou were watching on the way back but that was about it.

In town there was a sort of history gallery, Nature’s North Wildlife Gallery , which is definitely worth a look. Along with Inuit history there was a lot of stuffed animals on display in – a huge Moose, Elks, Caribou, many types of deers, birds and of course, bears.