Torchlight Aurora

The wind blows sparks from my torch as I watch the aurora borealis from the ridge of Donnelly Dome, south of Delta Junction.

Over the past four seasons, I've attempted to photogragh the aurora borealis from several natural settings away from Alaska's road system. I wouldn't refer to them all as "backcountry", but each location took significant effort to reach whether the aurora showed up or not. This fall I hoped to catch a good aurora show while camped near the base of Denali, but the overnight weather simply never cooperated. I spent a cold night winter camping with friends next to Black Rapids Glacier in mid-March but the great aurora show I was expecting showed up early and flared out by the time the sky darkened that night. Another attempted aurora photography adventure was thwarted in late March when I got my car stuck in the snow in my driveway.

With aurora photography season quickly coming to a close in Interior Alaska, I took advantage of a clear, moonless night in April with a good aurora forecast and set out to climb Donnelly Dome. Since there would be no moon to light up the landscape, I brought along supplies to make a rudimentary torch: a long wooden stick, an old t-shirt soaked in vegetable oil, some matches, and the toilet paper I always keep in my pack for kindling. The warm glow from a fire nicely complements the aurora on dark nights and adds a bit of life to an aurora image, and with the torch I would have the freedom to move around and create more adventurous shots than with a campfire.      

Aurora borealis dancing during twilight above the lights of Fort Greely.

I arrived at the base of Donnelly Dome after 10 p.m. with the orange glow of nautical twilight still on the horizon. The aurora was already stirring so I paused for a few shots as I snowshoed up the trail toward the steep slope on the north side of the dome. After an hour or so I reached the summit ridge and found a steep rocky portion where I began waiting for the aurora to brighten again. The breeze was cold enough that I felt the need to put on my parka, and I threw on my polar bear pajama bottoms as a joke for anyone looking closely at my photographs. 

View of Fort Greely and the Missile Defense Complex from Donnelly Dome prior to lighting the torch. Light pollution is noticeably reflecting off the snow over 10 miles away in this long exposure.

I prepared my camera gear and took a few test shots without the torch so I'd be ready when the aurora sparked up. The foreground appeared very dim and blended in too much with the flats below. Posing silhouetted on the ridge made the image more interesting, but it still didn't really pop. I waited for over an hour until the aurora finally showed signs of life, at which point I quickly lit the torch and began photographing.

Posing with the torch on the ridge of Donnelly Dome overlooking Fort Greely.

The torch burned brightly, completely outclassing my headlamp and making it difficult to prevent overexposing the foreground as I executed my shot looking towards Fort Greely. I used my camera's timer to capture images of me posing with the torch while trying to stay completely still in the breeze. It doesn't seem like a t-shirt and a little vegetable oil would burn very long but the torch lasted over 20 minutes, which allowed me to try several different compositions as the aurora shifted in the sky. For about 30 seconds the aurora went wild over the summit of Donnelly Dome in the opposite direction, but I didn't have enough time to reposition the tripod, change the timer settings and find a good spot to pose with the torch to capture the display. Oh well, it was still a cool sight. 

After the torch burned out, so did the aurora. I made my way down in the dark and got back to town sometime after 4 a.m. These aurora images turned out to be my last of the season and I won't be taking any more until at least August. Hopefully, solar minimum will have passed by then and we'll see more frequent stunning aurora displays next winter!  

For tips on creating aurora images like these, read my free Aurora Photography Guide.
Interested in Aurora Borealis Photography Tours? Contact me for more information!  

Donnelly Dome Aurora Shoot

A band of aurora hangs over the Alaska Range.  The bright object is Jupiter.

The bright moon was shining in a crystal-clear sky, the aurora was out, and I didn’t have to wake up for work the next day: it was finally time for a Donnelly Dome night climb.

I packed up my gear and started driving down the Richardson Highway. About halfway to the dome I did a double-take when I saw my car’s thermometer reading: -22 °F! What?!! It was above zero when I left town... 

I planned for a subzero climb but I wasn’t expecting -22 °F. At that temperature, I couldn’t be confident my car would start if I left it sitting all night. Luckily, temperature inversion was on my side and my thermometer read -11 °F at the base of the dome, warm enough that I knew my car would start later. I parked and started walking up the relatively flat portion of the trail with my headlamp on. A minute or two later, I saw some movement up ahead—two moose scurrying away from the trail in the moonlight. A third moose simply stood and watched me as I passed by. The aurora was dancing brightly across the sky, and as tempting as it was to chase after the elusive ‘moose under the aurora’ shot I’ve imagined for a while, I decided to keep moving.

The snow covering the lower part of the dome wasn’t very deep in most spots. I found it easy to climb by stepping in moose tracks (and probably some caribou), and after a few minutes I felt nice and toasty despite my minimal attire and the subzero cold. I made it to the ridge and proceeded from there with my headlamp turned off—the moon was that bright. The ridge was a cakewalk compared to climbing in the snow, and I paused only to gaze at the aurora periodically, anxiously noting that it was growing weaker.

During the final stretch to the summit, I began to feel a slight chill despite my exertion. A very gentle breeze was blowing, and the temperature definitely felt colder than -11 F. When I finally reached the summit, I dropped my backpack and donned my heavy parka and mittens, and that was the last time I felt cold. I brought my goggles along in case it was windy but I ended up not needing them. I set my camera on the tripod and started waiting for the aurora to reawaken.

With the aurora still in a lull, I headed down the southern slope of the dome looking for a rocky spot where I knew the edge dropped off steeply. I noticed some footprints along the way from some other hardy soul who made the climb up from the highway in the last few days. I found the spot I was looking for and the aurora started to brighten like clockwork. I snapped several shots, then walked back to the summit. I experimented with several camera angles while the aurora waxed and waned, but the aurora kept stalling just short of what was needed to match the moon in the night sky. I took a break and drank the hot chocolate I packed and sat down to check aurora activity on my phone.

When I glanced up after a couple minutes I was startled to see a bright green ribbon twisting violently in the sky above the lights of Fort Greely in the distance. I ran back to my tripod and instantly started shooting, not knowing whether the display would last for a few seconds, a few minutes, or a few hours. The aurora began sprawling across the sky, stretching over the mountains of the Alaska Range to the south and swirling over Fort Greely to the north. I spent the next half-hour maneuvering my tripod on top of the dome as the aurora shifted around the sky.

The aurora comes alive over the lights of Fort Greely and Delta Junction.

The display slowly dimmed until only a faint glow remained. I packed up my camera and started heading down the ridge, turning around to catch one last surreal glimpse of the snowy summit glowing under the moonlight with faint green patches of aurora shimmering in the sky overhead. Mount Hayes and Mount Moffit loomed like motionless sentinels in the distance.

I picked up my tracks in the snow and followed them quickly back to my car. The temperature had warmed up at the bottom to -5 °F, but it was still hovering near -20 °F on the Richardson Highway until I drove past Fort Greely, where the wind was blowing heavily and the temperature was above zero. The feeling that I had just been on the moon quickly expired as I drove by several early risers on their way to work.  

For tips on creating aurora images like these, read my free Aurora Photography Guide.
Interested in Aurora Borealis Photography Tours? Contact me for more information!