If chasing the Northern Lights isn’t on your bucket list, grab a pen and add it right now. While there are plenty of overrated experiences in life (we’re looking at you, New Year’s Eve), seeing the Aurora Borealis in person absolutely unequivocally does not disappoint. At Camp Nikka, which is part of Malangen Resort, you have approximately a whopping 85% chance of seeing the lights during winter season. A pretty incredible number, especially considering your staying at a nice resort!
Charged gaseous particles from the sun dance around the magnetic North Pole and flicker across the sky in crazy shapes and electric colors. The colors you see in the sky depend on the type of particles that are present (ionized nitrogen, excited oxygen, etc). It takes 40 hours for the particles to travel with the solar winds from the sun to our atmosphere.
A Camp Nikka, which is only a 20 minute walk from the resort, there is very little artificial light. Lanterns light the way to a lavvu (sort of like an open-air cabin), and a roaring fire keeps you warm while you wait for the sky to light up.
At there camp, there’s practically no artificial light polluting the sky, exponentially increasing your chances of seeing the Mother’s Nature greatest show. By the time we arrived at Camp Nikka at around 10:30pm, the sky was already being painted in huge swaths of florescent green.
For the 2 hours that we were there, the sky never dulled. The lights danced across the sky as if it were a piano being played by Mozart. Except the only sound to be heard was the crunching of snow beneath our feet as we wandered around, heads tilted back, and eyes glued to the sky. The silence of the winter night was only intermittently broken by the oohhs, ahhhs, and stunned gasps of amazement let out by ourselves and the fellow gazers.
With such a deep, dark night upon us, the sky was on fire. You could find all the constellations you learned as a child, and the stars were the most enchanting backdrop for the vivid Aurora Borealis light show. Finally, as if a dimmer were turned up, the lights dulled and the sky seemed to quite. The show had ended and we were fortunate enough to enjoy every last second of it.
This, my friends, is a bucket list experience that will leave you forever changed, and the Camp Nikka experience provided by Malangen Resort is one of the best ways to achieve the dream.
