My recent obsession is photographing the northern lights, so I’ve decided to put together a little “how to” for anyone interested in getting out there and seeing/shooting them.

First off, the northern lights are a phenomenon caused by solar storms on our sun. The sun emits gusts of charged solar particles hurtling across space and if earth ends up in the path of these particles they react with the earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field towards the poles. When the charged particles from the sun strike atoms and molecules in Earth’s atmosphere, they excite those atoms, causing them to light up. If you live in the higher latitudes you are much more likely to catch a glimpse of them. 

How do I know when to go look for them?
Personally, I am subscribed to http://earthsky.org/ newsletter, as well as the aurora forecast app on my phone and subscribed at http://www.aurorawatch.ca/alert. The app looks like this and gives you an idea of the likelihood of seeing them and the area they will be visible from.

Where should I go to see them?

If you are located at 50 degrees latitude or higher you probably don’t need to go far. Get out of the city to an area with minimal light pollution, and to the north of the source of the light pollution. Get your bearings, pull out your pretty smart phone and figure out which way faces the north or north east to see them.

How bright are they?

It really depends on the night, how far north you are, the intensity of the solar storm, cloud cover and how many beer you’ve had to drink. Some nights you can just see a greenish smokey slow moving cloud in the night sky. Most often it is a green band across the horizon. Other nights you get lucky and see pillars of colourful light raining down and lights dancing across the sky as if there is a big fire burning somewhere. 

How do I get a good photograph of them?

Unfortunately your cellphone camera isn’t going to cut it for this one. If you have a DSLR or camera with the ability to manually control the ISO, shutter speed, and aperture you should be able to get some good photos of them. 

1. Slap your camera on a tripod.

2. Set your wide angle lens focus to ∞ (infinity).

3. Set your aperture to be fairly wide open (2.8 or 3.5)

4. Set your ISO to 400-1600 depending on the conditions

5. Set your shutter speed to 10s - 20s

6. Aim your camera at the aurora part of the sky and see what you end up with.

Be patient, play around with composition to incorporate friends, structures or trees into the shot, stay warm and enjoy the rare sight.

Last week there were a crazy couple of days in terms of magnetic activity and Aurora! The aurora storm is apparently the strongest geomagnetic storm of the current solar cycle. The storm made for quite the show reaching far down into the United States. I captured these photos over a few nights after 10pm - 1am.

Booked a last minute flight to Mexico and escaped the cold. 

It didn’t take much convincing from my friends for me to pick up a splitboard and get into the backcountry. The basic kit includes a factory or homemade board that splits apart, climbing skins, splitboard bindings, collapsable poles, and avalanche safety gear.

Our crew from Saskatchewan loaded up the truck and headed out to Alberta. We met up with a friend (Joey Norsworthy) in Calgary for the night and headed out into the Kananaskis backcountry early the next morning for a day tour. The snow cover in that area at the time was pretty minimal and there were a lot of exposed rocks. While this didn’t make for amazing riding conditions it did mean the avalanche conditions were very safe and highly unlikely. It was a great intro to touring and helped me gain some familiarity with my gear and more experience changing over from touring mode to riding mode.

Later that night we met up with another friend from Golden BC, Colin Wallace. Colin is a contributor to sleddermag.com and has a ton of experience in the backcountry and splitboarding.

The hike in to the hut consists of about 530 meters in total elevation gain, the majority of the gain occurring atthe end of the hike. It was roughly a 8.5km hike and skin in which took usaround 4-5 hours. It was a greatworkout, and amazingly scenic. The we got to the hut just before dusk and setout for one quick run before dinner. Skinning up the powder covered glacier asthe sun set was pretty unreal. But even better were the sunset turns we got onthe way back down to the hut for dinner. We settled in and stoked the fires upnice and hot, and cracked open a few drinks and cooked some food.

The sleep was probably one of my worst but coffee and some cool mountain air in the morning had me wide awake. We ascended the glacier once more and were sure to rope up to one another forglacier travel. Our leader Colin navigated the crevasses and we all followed safelybehind. We chose to summit Mount Olive, which lies along the continental divideof BC and Alberta. The peak is about 700m elevation gain from the hut and tookus 2-3hrs to reach the peak with a few snack breaks. The views were prettyunreal and the peaks made me feel very small and insignificant. We chose not toride from the top due to the variable snow conditions and visible sliding oncongruent slopes. We switched our boards over to ride mode a littlefurther down the peak and got in some rad turns on the way back down to the hutthough. The long slog out of the canyonwasn’t terribly fun and my feet were in agony from breaking in a new pair ofboots. Overall the trip was a super cool experience and opened my eyes to how much there is to learn about backcountry riding and ski touring.