This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

We night sky watchers had a bit of a boring winter here in Hay River this year. A mix of bad weather, bad geomagnetic conditions and bad luck have led to some dark skies.

March so far has been a good month for aurora viewing and photographing, though.

The 2nd of the month looked to be too overcast for good photos, but the skies cleared up nicely and I headed down to the Pine Point bridge just outside of town to get a few shots from down on the river looking up at the bridge.

I also shot a 20 minute or so time-lapse before leaving.

Northern Lights Time Lapse from March 1, 2013 from Scott Clouthier on Vimeo.

Last night I went out with fellow photographers Adam Hill and Sean Pinnington to the Alexandra Falls to scope out the starry sky and Milky Way during the new moon. While there, we were also treated to a faint but colourful show of northern lights.

And here is another time-lapse, this one is about 35 minutes condensed.

Northern Lights Time Lapse from March 6, 2013 from Scott Clouthier on Vimeo.

I went out for a short while to see if I could hunt down some aurora borealis (northern lights) tonight, as it was a perfectly clear sky and fairly mild temperature (yes I consider -33 to be fairly mild).

It never totally exploded in the kind of fashion we’re lucky to see on the best of nights, but far out of town and away from the “city glow” I was able to catch some faint lights in the sky.

Tonight was also the first night I’ve seen so much red in the auroras. Typically you see mostly green, sometimes with a hint of pink or red, but for the time I was out tonight, the sky was predominantly red.

I had my first opportunity to shoot Kayak Polo for the first time this past Sunday.

The sport is played largely the same as water polo, except the players are all sitting in small specialized kayaks. The ball is played with a combination of hand, paddle and vessel. The object as always, is to score by tossing the ball past a goaltender and into the net, in this case suspended about two meters above the surface of the water.

Much like water polo, the sport is deceptively rough-and-tumble. Hand tackles are allowed – wherein you shove your opponent, often times causing them to capsize. Then there is also the boat tackle, where you ram your kayak into your opponent’s. This can be rib-crackingly painful for the recipient if mistimed.

The sport did seem to be a lot of fun, though, and I’m thinking next time this event comes to town I should strap a GoPro to my chest and join in.

Had my first chance last night to get out and capture the Northern Lights here in Stony Rapids. It was a beautiful clear night and we saw a good burst of colour.

Our staff house here is only footsteps away from the Fond du Lac River, so I made my way down to the river’s edge for the best view of the lights.

The solar forecast is calling for more lights tonight, so I’ll be watching the skies.

This is my first blog post from Saskatchewan!

A week ago today (March 15), Leanne and I boarded a plane in Fort Chipewyan, Alberta and flew off to our new home in Stony Rapids, Saskatchewan. We had been living in Fort Chip for the previous nine-and-a-half months working for the North West Company and were enjoying it there until a few weeks ago we got a call from the company’s HR manager informing us we were going to be transferred to another store in Stony Rapids.

It’s a smaller store, a smaller town, but also an opportunity to gain new experience and further ourselves within the company.

So, with some hesitation, we boarded our chartered Cessna 206 that day a week ago and flew off to a place we’d never been before.

It turned out to be a great day for flying. With only a slight tailwind we had a smooth flight and arrived in Stony Rapids after about an hour and 15 minutes in the air.

After landing, we were picked up by our new store manager, Lynn, and given a brief tour of town – though she herself had only arrived there a few days before us.

The town itself is quite picturesque – well, maybe not so much right now as it’s we’re still in the throes of winter, but in the warmer months float planes land on the river right across from the store and the fishing is supposed to be very good.

While Leanne and I are definitely missing the good friends we made in Fort Chip, we’re also enjoying ourselves so far here in Stony Rapids and looking forward to the future.

Wow, we’ve really been seeing a lot of awesome Northern Lights here recently. Tonight’s show started early – I looked out the door just after 8 p.m. and the sky was already starting to fill up with auroras. By 8:30, things really started to pick up and we (myself, Leanne and her parents who are visiting us this weekend) decided to hit to the road and try to find a better spot for pictures. I’d had the idea ever since we went to Fort McMurray two weekends ago to take some photos from one of the ice crossings just outside of town. By the time we got out to Rivière des Rochers, there was already some brilliant, fast-moving auroras to be seen. I stopped there and took a 30 minute time lapse and a few other shots before we continued on to the Quatre Fourches crossing.

I was hoping to get another 30 mins worth of time lapse, but after about 15 minutes my camera started to act a bit funny because of the cold, so we called it quits and came back home to warm up.

Here’s the time lapse version of what I did manage to get.

The sun decided to give us a Valentine’s Day treat in the form of geomagnetic radiation. The sky over Fort Chip was filled with brilliant and fast-moving auroras which I’m told could be seen from around 9 p.m. until dawn.

Here’s another time lapse I did between 12:15 and 1:15 a.m.

This past weekend, Leanne and I decided to make a trip to Fort McMurray via the winter road – 280 kilometres of groomed ice and snow between here and there.

We loaded up Van Morrison (our 1995 Plymouth Voyager) with various emergency supplies, snacks, topped the tank up with gas, topped our travel mugs with fresh coffee and headed off around 8 a.m. on Saturday morning.

Since I had never driven on this winter road before (and Leanne hadn’t been on it since we lived in Hay River a few years back), we took a pretty cautious approach to our trip down. I must say the road, for what it is, is in great condition. The first part is mostly straight stretches of road over the frozen muskeg (bog) with a few river crossings, afterwards it starts getting more windy and hilly as you drive through the woodlands.

I drove, of course.

After about three hours of this you come out onto a logging road, which then becomes a two-lane paved highway and finally a four-lane freeway once you reach the (in)famous oil sands.

It was my first time seeing the oil sands up close. Without sounding too Greenpeacey, I’ll say this: I have a hard time believing that industrialization of this scale can’t or won’t have a large impact on the region’s ecology. /activism

I have no photos of Fort Mac to share. We were too busy shopping and meeting friends and, also, it’s just not that pretty of a town. At least not at this time of year.

So after our two unrelaxing days we hit the road back home. This time Leanne was actually kind enough to drive halfway on the winter road so I could unwind.

Thought I would have a try at doing a time lapse of the Northern Lights from our front deck while I made supper tonight for Leanne. The following is 120 frames shot over about one hour and 20 minutes.

For the full HD version, click the title of the video to watch it on vimeo.com.

UPDATE 9:58PM: Just reuploaded a higher quality video. Should be working again in about 20 minutes. Sorry for the inconvenience. Works now.