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Winter in Alaska

Aurora, mountains, and bush mail flights

By Scott Richardson

March 29^th, 2024

Seeing the northern lights for the first time was mesmerizing. The swirling colors of the aurora above Fairbanks capped off an incredible first visit to Alaska in 2015. Since then, I’ve been lucky enough to see the lights in Iceland and briefly again in Alaska on a trip to Wrangell-St. Elias.

After several trips to Alaska in summer and fall, I returned in winter, hoping to experience the northern lights at their predicted peak around the spring equinox.

Knowing I’d be at the mercy of the weather and solar storms, I kept my plans loose and booked just two accommodations for 1.5 weeks: a lodge near Denali and a small cabin on the outskirts of Fairbanks.

Fairbanks is the perfect basecamp for aurora-chasing; it’s the closest city in Alaska to the Arctic Circle and sits directly under the auroral oval. It also sits at the intersection of many of Alaska’s highways, which made it easy to make a split decision when cloud cover changed.

When I landed in Fairbanks at 2 AM, the temperature was a cool -16°. My seatmates on the plane reported seeing a faint aurora just before we landed, but by the time I picked up my rental car and drove out of town, the sky had clouded over. I slept for an hour in the car on top of the frigid Murphy Dome, but the cold got the better of me, and I drove back into town to warm up at the grocery store when it opened at 5 AM.

After picking up groceries at Safeway, stove fuel at Walmart, and a lighter at a gas station (from a store worker concerned that 6 AM was a little early to start smoking before I explained it was to light my stove), I traveled south to Denali.

I spent three days exploring the first 13 miles of the Denali Park road by car as far as I could drive and by foot and snowshoe up to the Savage River. The frozen rivers, creeks, and lakes offered dramatic views of the surrounding mountains.

In Fairbanks, I spent my days exploring the University Museum and the Interagency Public Lands Center, where I watched all of their films and read all of their exhibits.

One day, I accompanied a bush pilot on mail delivery to Circle and Central, two small communities technically drivable from Fairbanks via the Steese Highway but more safely visited in winter by plane. The only other passengers were two indigenous residents of Circle traveling back to visit family, and once they disembarked, it was just the pilot and I exploring the Alaskan backcountry and spotting mining remnants in the landscape.

Another afternoon, I drove the road to Chena Hot Springs and hiked along its snowmobile trails until the sun faded. And I spent another afternoon following arctic-bound trucks up the winding, slow Elliot Highway to where it meets the Dalton Highway haul road.

Another day, I drove to Delta Junction and down the Richardson Highway to the Castner Glacier, where a glacial creek forms an ice cave every winter. Ice forms brittle, sparkling stalactites along the cave’s ceiling in endless patterns.

I had good luck spotting the aurora most nights of my trip. However, localized clouds made me weary of traveling too far from some common spots where I usually found clear skies. The Chena Lakes Recreation Area was a 10-minute drive from my cabin. I spent hours walking along the frozen lake, admiring the aurora. I also had good luck poking my head out of the cabin door, then running along an access road for the Alaska Pipeline that gave me a clearing from the trees when the aurora unexpectedly became active.

Exhausted by exploring each day and night, I ended the trip with a lazy afternoon at Fairbank’s breweries. I met some interesting people at Black Spruce Brewing, who adopted me into their friend group and convinced me to accompany them to HooDoo Brewing. We ended the night with some interesting conversations. The people of Fairbanks are an interesting bunch.