Unfortunately my first attempt to view the aurora borealis on Tuesday night was unsuccessful. I set my alarm for 1 am and sat with 2 of my roommates outside, staring at the northern sky for 45 mintues. The next morning we learned that we had missed the spectacular light show by only an hour.
Determined to see them, my friend Iraise spent the following day tracking the solar storm intensity and the cloud cover in a 200 mile radius of Skagway. She tracked me down later in the day to invite me to drive up to Carcross, British Columbia with her, where she was confident we would find clear skies and dancing lights. When she said she could be ready to leave at 8:15 pm, I told her that might be taking it too far- the sun wasn't even due to set until 10:45 there.
We hit the road around 11:30 and began driving north. We crossed the boarder and found a parking lot where we set up a tarp and some blankets, prepared to wait as long as it would take to see the northern lights. At 1:45, we were beginning to suspect that the bright crescent moon was casting too much light, and we decided to drive south to where we could find darker skies.
As we drove south, we noticed the cloud cover was increasing, so we turned around, crossed through customs again, and began driving back north to where we had eaten oreos and told stories to stay awake earlier. As I was riding co-pilot, I looked up to the north and saw a beautiful ribbon of milky-blue light and immediately began yelling for Iraise to pull the car over. As soon as we were safetly out of the avalanche zone, we pulled over to the shoulder and scrambled to see the ethereal aurora. Just minutes after we pulled over, the clouds descended on us and we lost sight of the lights. But that one glimpse was all Iraise needed; we got back into the car and she bagn driving north, laughing that she felt like a storm chaser.
I don't know how far north we drove, but we never got a clear view of the aurora borealis again. We turned around and I tried to stay awake as we drove back through the lonely mountains. I woke up once we stopped outside my apartment at 4 am, and trudged inside to sleep for only 3 and half hours before waking up to go to work the next morning.
We may not have seen as much of the aurora borealis as we had hoped, but we sure gave it our best effort. Sometimes the journey alone is enough.
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