Aurora from the Tors Trail
by Lee Petersen
Week of March 2, 2026
Why This Photograph Exists
It was late March in 2015 when I decided to pull a sled with camping gear and 20 pounds of camera equipment up the Granite Tors trail. It was a miserable trip. Well, the snowshoeing was miserable. The views were great.
The nights were chilly, between 0°F and 10°F, but it warmed to just about, or even slightly above, freezing during the day. There was a layer of windcrust/suncrust, a few inches thick, on top of many feet of unconsolidated, powdery, hoarfrost-laden snow. Perfect conditions for some of the worst postholing I’ve ever experienced. It was a miracle if I could make it 10 steps without punching through the crust. What followed was a struggle that sometimes lasted many minutes to pull myself out and get back on top of the crust.
I think at one point it took me nearly 4 hours to go a mile. It ended up being one of the few hikes in my life that I just flat-out gave up on. Still, I did manage to make it about 5.5 miles up the “trail” (there was no trail to follow after the first mile).
I remember being incredibly determined for about the first half of my second day. Until I reached the point where I realized the likelihood of my making it all the way to the tors within another day was very small. The only way I could have shortened my travel time would have been to hike at night when the snow firmed up, but my entire goal of the trip was aurora photography, so it started to feel pointless.
Still, I had to make the best of the situation, so I made it far enough out of the trees to get some good views of the hills and the Chena River Valley.
While I had planned on staying three nights, since I bailed a little early, I only camped for two. My campsites were barely a couple of miles apart.
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It was the second night. To this day, it may have been the best aurora I’ve ever seen. Around 3 am, I pulled myself out of my sleeping bag and walked out into the cold. What followed was a coronal display that was bright enough and lasted long enough for me to stop thinking about the camera entirely.
The coronal display happened as the aurora band moved from north to south. After it moved overhead, there was still an incredible amount of detail in the rays and curtains when I took this photo of the southern sky. Plenty of the high-altitude red was visible to the eye.
The reason I keep revisiting this photo is that it reminds me of how hard I’m willing to work for the things I’m passionate about, that not everything works out as hoped or planned, and that I can still pull something good out of what feels, at the time, like a disaster.
Not to mention the additional memory of my car being totaled by a tourist on the way home while trying to help another group out of a ditch.
This photograph is featured as this week’s Photo of the Week and is available as an open-edition archival print through my print lab.
Prints are available in multiple sizes and formats and ship directly to you.
I really had no intention of using two Granite Tors photos in a row for my photo of the week, but I guess it is one of my most photographed areas, and there is clearly a reason that I keep coming back to it.
Photo of the Week is a weekly series featuring a single photograph and a short reflection on place and how it’s felt over time.
The photograph might be new, long archived, or something that sat unnoticed for years. It doesn’t matter when it was taken, only why it’s being revisited now.
This series is a way for me to be more intentional and think carefully about why I take photographs at all.
