Waking up next to huge waves and icebergs and glaciers surrounding us was certainly awe inspiring and magnificent. We had arranged with Colby and joe the night before to meet a few minutes down the road for them to take us to an ice cave a few miles inland. We found the unmarked road and parked and waited for them. We were going to shoot the sunrise at a reflection pond along the way, but it was totally frozen and so all of us decided to go shoot the sunrise at the ice beach... Which ended up not being great, so we went back to the unmarked ice cave road and 7 of us squeezed into a huge hummer that Colby had and threw our gear in the trunk. Photographers have a lot of gear! We drove a few miles inland towards the glacier with a few frozen river crossings and fun 4 wheel drive action. No way would our puny happy camper van have made it very far down this road! I was also sitting on a lap and didn't have much room to move at all! I thought it would be cold and windy in the ice cave, so I prepared for that with layer upon layer of clothing and almost had so much on that I felt like a big marshmallow or the Michelin man and a bit clumsy!
We were so lucky to have run into Colby and joe and fortunate that they took all of us to this amazing ice cave. When we arrived, we had to hike in a bit, but it was magnificent when we got there. You could walk through the ice cave and then it opened up to the full glacier, rivers, awesome other caves and mountains! We spent about three hours with them photographing, exploring, crossing the rivers and getting our socks wet, putting yak track equivalents on so we could explore a deeper cave that was super neat right at the base of the glacier and also enjoying the sunshine for a bit too!
The ice cave was stunning. The color of the cave was not just ice color, but blue, glacial blue, and the cave was formed by the wind and the rivers and so the abstract shapes were incredibly neat. It was so cool to be able to walk into the cave!
After we were all done in the cave, we jumped back in the hummer and went to our vans where we proceeded to spend the next four hours scouting where we wanted to shoot the aurora that evening as it was expected to "blow up." We drove forty minutes west to a glacier to see if it was worth driving to it later to shoot. It was beautiful and we put it in the list in case it got cloudy where we were. We also checked out the glacier lagoon as a spot and a place right near the place we were staying for the evening... Which was the first hotel we stayed in.
That evenings sunset was a pretty one and we shot it at the ice beach for a while. Then decided to checkin at our hotel. We had briefly stopped there earlier and the guy said that he had moved our reservation to another hotel with a room with a private bath, so we actually lucked out and had private bathrooms! (Uncommon here). So we checked into the new hotel, unloaded our stuff into the little cabin rooms, showered and then went to dinner in the hotel. As soon as we sat down, everyone went running outside, including us, because the aurora had just started! It was very faint at first and just a white line across the sky, but soon it started getting stronger and the green appeared. Aaron ran and got his camera, while the rest of us ordered food. He took some shots, we scarfed our food down (which was pretty good) and then quickly changed into warm clothes and headed out to shoot.
The first spot we stopped was very close to our hotel and we shot there from about 10-12, where the aurora was just amazing! Then we decided to change locations to get a different composition and went to the ice beach. Willie and Alan shot there and Aaron and I went across the street to the ice lagoon to shoot. We all shot there for a while, then decided to go back to the original spot and shoot some more from the other side of the street because the aurora was in a different direction. Auroras are amazing. If you ever have the opportunity to see them, do it! They were literally dancing in the sky in front of us. Everyone I had talked to always said that and I didn't know what they meant until I saw it with my own eyes.
We finally stopped shooting around 3 and went home to sleep in the the first nice bed we've had! We slept in a bit :) overall, an amazing day was had by all.
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