🇨🇦 A Different Yellowknife

Aurora Capital – Yellowknife, Canada🇨🇦 📍Yellowknife, Canada NASA has named it one of the best spots to view the aurora borealis. ⛅⛅ With around 240 aurora-active days a year, its vast, sparsely populated landscapes create ideal conditions for aurora watching.💒 💫Countless travelers from around the world visit specifically to see the auroras, making it almost a town dedicated to this spectacle.👉👈 There are many professional groups offering aurora-chasing tours. It’s best to plan at least 3 nights to maximize your chances of seeing the auroras.🍐🎼 💫Joining a tour is highly recommended. Yellowknife’s aurora tours are mostly professional, and independent travel can be challenging. 🌸 Aurora viewing spots are often remote and exposed, plus Yellowknife is extremely cold—driving on snow and ice is unsafe, which can dampen the experience.😍😍 📍Accommodation🏠🏠 I visited during the Spring Festival, booking a 3-night tour package.⚠️ I stayed at the Explorer Hotel, which has the best location—right in the city center. Steps from the hotel are a large supermarket and a big pharmacy (with cosmetics). ✨✨ 🇨🇳Chinese restaurants, Vietnamese eateries, and more are within a 5-10 minute walk—ultra-convenient. The hotel was decent: rooms are small, and the restaurant food is average, but overall okay. Explorer and Nova are the two top hotels in Yellowknife.🎄🎄 📍Itinerary I started aurora chasing the day I arrived, heading to an Indigenous community. 💕💕 The temperature was -40°C outside, with a wind chill of around -50°C—freezing! Luckily, I covered myself in heat packs.👁️👁️ 💫We got lucky: we saw auroras shortly after arriving, around 10 PM. They weren’t strong, but we were thrilled. When they suddenly vanished, I checked outside every 5-10 minutes.👣👣 💫Perseverance paid off: around 1 AM, huge swathes of auroras appeared—stunningly beautiful! As we were leaving around 2 AM, there was a massive aurora outbreak. We all screamed—it was beautiful🌈. 💫The second night’s bus tour and third night’s teepee village tour did have auroras, but thick clouds hid them from view. Thankfully, we’d seen them the first night—another reason to book 3 nights. Luck matters too; some people miss out for days.👍👍 📍Gear Staying warm in -40°C is non-negotiable. I wore 3 layers of thermal underwear/pants, plus North Face ski pants (windproof, waterproof), a sweater, and a fleece-lined Timberland—still felt cold in the feet. Heat packs and a good camera👀👆 are musts 🍲🍲Most rent cold-weather gear (like Canada Goose), but my boyfriend and I wore Bosideng’s extreme cold series—just as effective. Kudos to Chinese brands for stepping up!🌈 #Yellowknife #Aurora #Lighthouse #Nightview