The Summer Solstice, official first day of summer and longest day of the year, has officially passed. Ironic that summer has only really just begun and we can already start complaining about losing daylight and the months of darkness that loom ahead. But luckily, celebrating the Solstice in Anchorage is typically a joyous occasion: it is the exact opposite of those very dreaded aformentioned months of darkness.
The Solstice celebration in Anchorage began on Saturday, because Anchoragites just can't pass up a nice summer day. (They are often few and far between). With the Mayor's Midnight Sun Marathon and Half-Marathon, there are plenty of ways to torture yourself in the name of sunshine. I ran the half, which despite being painful was also the most tanning I've gotten in all summer. I guess I'll take what I can get.
Downtown Anchorage was also alive with the Summer Solstice Festival-- basically a lot of overpriced touristy crap to buy and food that's sure to counteract whatever benefit running the marathon gave you. What a great tradition. Perhaps the most popular Solstice tradition is the midnight hike up Flattop mountain-- the most overused, overrated hike in Alaska. Since you can drive your car halfway up the mountain (but never find a parking spot) and follow a wide, gravel path and built in stairs most of the way to the summit, it is very overly popular on all days of the summer. The wide, windswept plateau of a summit is perfect for late-night beer drinking and bonfires, both of which are illegal in the Chugach State Park.
So Saturday night was the first of many Solstice-themed Flattop adventures-- mostly the 9-5 crowd who didn't have the luxury of waiting until true Solstice to make the hike. The three extra seconds of daylight really made a difference.
What does it really mean to live in "the land of the midnight sun" on the longest day of the year? Well, there's no tanning available at 2 in the morning. In Anchorage, the sun set at 11:49 pm and rose at 4:20 am on the night of Tuesday the 21st. Those four and a half hours of "darkness" never really get past the light blue dusky phase: enough to drive with your headlights on but not enough to be afraid of what's ahead in the shadows. Drive eight hours north to Fairbanks, Alaska, where the sun only dipped below the horizon from 12:58 am till 2:48 am. A couple thousand miles north of there, in Barrow, AK, the sun does not sink below the horizon for three months straight. Then again, it still snowed there last week.
In addition to joining the masses at Flattop, there are plenty of late-night Solstice activities. Most just include driving out to a scenic viewpoint and watching the sun(not)set: Beluga Point, the top of Aleyeska Mountain, Point Woronzof, etc. In a way, the Solstice is a bit like New Year's Eve: it never quite lives up to your expectations. It may seem like the most exciting night of the summer, but the negligible difference in daylight gain really makes it just another long night of Alaskan summer. Beautiful, yes, but it hardly turns out to be anything too special. When I began this blog post at 2:27 am last night, my Solstice festivities had come to an end. But now we're losing daylight more and more every day, so the rest of the summer will be a scramble to soak up as many minutes as possible before the darkness and seasonal affective disorder kicks in in the fall.
Unfortunately, I can't get a picutre of the sky at midnight to upload, but I'll post one as soon as I can!
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