Aurora Hunting

Going aurora hunting has always been on my travel bucket list. Last year in October, I finally had the opportunity to go to Yellowknife, Yukon and do some hunting myself! (well with a guide of course haha) The whole duration of the trip was 3 nights and 4 days. We literally went just to go watch the northern lights, because honestly, there is literally nothing to do other than that. I mean you can experience other excursions if you go during winter like ice fishing or dog sledding; but when I went, it was during the fall so there wasn’t enough snow to really do more than just hunt for aurora.

Hunting for aurora is not really a solo thing that you can do. That’s why we signed up for a tour to help guide us. Every night the aurora changes so we were literally chasing the lights, driving different directions. Also, they tell us ahead of time that every night is not guaranteed success (to avoid any complaints haha) - the time we went (around mid-October) is usually cloudy season, so chances of seeing were kinda 50/50.

The tour pretty much started in the middle of the night (~12:30-1 AM) and it goes for about 4 hours. Because the location of the lights was not fixed, the guide would have to use a device to detect which direction it was heading and then we would drive towards it. For us, 2 out of the 3 nights was successful, one of the nights was way too cloudy to be visible. Since the tour happened at night, we would just rest during the day, and maybe walk around the city (which took about 40 mins to walk the whole downtown haha).

Once we found a location, we parked in the middle of a field, walked out, set up the tripod and just waited. The first thing the guide did was set a flare gun to scare off any bears that were possibly in the area LOL. After that, all we had to do was just wait. While we were waiting, I took pictures of the sky and I kid you not, I have never seen that many stars in my whole life. It was amazing!! I was able to see the Seven Sisters (constellation of Taurus), the dippers, and even Mars!! I was in awe.

Moments later, the guide told us the aurora was coming our way. What’s interesting is that the first time we spotted the lights, we weren’t really able to tell because with our naked eye, the lights were white - making it look like it was just clouds but really, it was the lights. The guide mentioned that usually, the fainter aurora would appear as if they were just a stream of clouds - only the strong ones would be able to see them in colour. Even though the faint one looks white/grey in real life, when you take the pictures, it still shows up green. Mid-October is still not considered high peak season-it’s more like the beginning so there wasn’t as much colour in the lights as we see in photos. During one of the nights, the aurora was so strong that we were able to see the colour!! Even better, it was even dancing along the sky!! It was honestly breathtaking.

All in all, it was definitely an amazing experience, watching the aurora dance and go hunting (for the lights). If you ever have the chance to do so, I highly recommend! Next future destination for aurora? Iceland!