The Northern Lights in Churchill, Manitoba

For the past six years, I’ve made an annual journey to Churchill, Manitoba. I have been working with a tour operator to provide nature loving visitors with the opportunity to chase the aurora borealis. What excites me most about the northern lights is their unwavering ability to blow my mind. Having spent somewhere around 100 frigid nights waiting and watching the skies over the frozen landscape I have come to thoroughly appreciate the different shapes, sizes, speeds, colours, and movement of the lights.

Photo 1: The Northern Lights, Frozen Tundra, Spruce Trees, and the Hudson Bay.

This photo was taken in 2017 shortly after a three day blizzard bombarded the town of Churchill. The community declared a state of emergency after the town was buried with several feet of snow. Snow removal crews were operating around the clock to clear the streets of drifted snow and keep essential services functioning. The wind was blowing over 100km/hr sustained and the snow was more like little pellets of ice, carving and cutting the snowdrifts into unique shapes and designs. The drifts themselves were solid. Though they looked fragile with their intricate designs, I could easily walk across the snow drifts without falling through.

The above photo is taken from a rocky ridge just outside of town. The ridge opens to the north and overlooks the frozen Hudson Bay. The Northern Lights typically begin to appear from the northeast and so this location is absolutely perfect for setting up and waiting for the lights to appear. On this night, the moon was in full force and the sky was clear. The moon does make it more difficult to see faint aurora, but it provides a distinct illumination of foreground for photography. The moonlight cast beautiful shadows across the delicate ridges snow drifts and with a gentle aurora in the background. The scattered spruce trees on the horizon complete the scene.

Boreal Forest, Wapusk Adventures, and the Northern Lights

One of my favourite place to go with my groups is out to the boreal forest and to the cabin at Wapusk Adventures. Situated about a 15 minute drive outside of Churchill, Manitoba, Wapusk Adventures is the photographers delight. All around the cabin and dog yard there are mature black spruce trees and tamarack trees. Beyond that, the owner of Wapusk Adventures, Dave Daley, is of Metis heritage and shares that heritage with my groups via rich stories and an authentic northern experience. He the Metis flag which predates the Canadian flag by over 150 years and he has a permanent teepee adjacent to the cabin. There is a fire pit in the middle of the teepee and so we can roast marsh-mellows and make smore’s while we wait for the northern lights to make an appearance. When the lights do come out, the glow from the fire illuminates the teepee and creates a powerful foreground.

Surprised by the Northern Lights while on the road

When I’m up in Churchill in the winter, I head out after dinner with my group to one of a few viewing locations outside of town. They are all within a 15-20 minute drive over ice-covered dirt roads. I’m always keeping tabs on the short-term northern lights forecast with a couple of smartphone apps. They are usually pretty good in the forecasting of when the lights might get bright within about 30 minutes notice, but as with all forecasts, nothing is perfect. The night that I took this photo we were on the gravel road heading east towards our destination for the evening. As we rounded an S-curve in the road that followed a rocky escarpment, I looked out the window and saw the sky had turned from being mostly dark to exploding with aurora. We stopped the bus right there on the road and piled out of the bus and into the snow.

As we all scrambled through knee deep snow with our tripods and cameras, the lights were dazzling. This powerful band of aurora shone brightly from the northeast to the northwest. In what is called an “auroral sub-storm” this steady band began to waver and wobbly, seemingly becoming unstable about our heads. It seemed to burst it’s boundaries and broke apart into this dazzling swirl. The northern lights were bright enough to illuminate the foreground. The precambrian rock over 2 billion years old and coated with a thin layer of snow is dotted with windblown spruces trees. The landscape provides the perfect scene for the northern lights to dance and play in the sky. A truly northern sight.