Strong gales close the sky station…..but all was not lost!

By our third night in Abisko unfortunately a huge band of cloud had arrived, masking the beautiful arctic starry skies and as a result halted any opportunity of seeing the aurora. The temperature which had been as cold as the mid -20’s had now rapidly increased to near on 0 degrees so a stark contrast to the days prior.

Checking the forecast it seemed that the cloud was here to stay and indeed waking the next morning it had continued to loiter above us, however this time was now accompanied by high gale force winds. The date was the 30th of December and the date that we had pre booked to go up to the famous ‘Aurora sky station’. An observation area that is perched just under 3000 feet above sea level and as a result of the surrounding mountains acting as a ‘buffer’ it tends to usually suffer from a little less cloud and as a result is a ‘hot spot’ to see the aurora.

However, by late afternoon the winds were gusting somewhat ferociously and given that the transport from sea level to the top is by a small chair lift it seemed as if our trip to the sky station was likely to be doomed. Indeed as we called in to the base station in the evening we were greeted by confirmation that they had to shut the chair lift and station for safety reasons. With no option of a refund we discussed our options and the kind lady at reception managed to rebook us for the 2nd January. So all was not lost and we were happy with this resolution. It was just one of those situations where nature had taken control!

On the positive with the wind came constant movement in the cloud. It remained cloudy and very windy but gaps were opening up and not wishing to give up on the aurora we took a trek at around 9pm from the base station down a small path leading to the huge frozen lake. Approximately a 1km walk trudging through the deep snow and hoping that we would get a window of opportunity and also find somewhere away from the wind.

As we trekked toward the shoreline of the lake we gazed skyward and were greeting by ever clearing skies, ironic given that when we looked up toward to the sky station it was thick grey cloud! Within a short time a green band quickly became visible. Given that sometimes the aurora appears only for a few moments we wasted no time, stopped immediatley in our tracks and quickly set up the tripods. Within moments were shooting a beautiful rainbow of green that formed an arch in the skies and then danced away. The wind blew hard making it hard to get the trees in the frame sharp (and hard to keep the tripods steady!) However, the motion blur of the swaying trees gave the images a little character!

Trees swaying to the dancing aurora

After a short time the aurora faded and so we took this lull in activity as a good opportunity to continue on our way to the lake. Hoping for another show of the aurora. Again as luck would have it around 30 minutes after arriving at the lake the aurora appeared again. This time high across the mountains across the lake and over a cabin. As the aurora danced on and off for around 1.5 hours we could not help feel there had been somewhat of a twist of fate as throughout the evening the sky station had remained closed, with an ominous cloud that had cloaked the observation area all evening. We were thankful that we were not up there after all!