Please check our Frequently Asked Questions below before sending an inquiry as it may already be answered.
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Fairbanks Aurora Tours
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Frequently Asked Questions
Question: When is the best time to come?
Anytime your personal schedule allows from August 21st to April 21st is a good time. We find April to be the best of all months due to historic average weather being more favorable. More information can be found here.
Question: Are there restroom breaks?
On the vast majority of our tours, we stop at an outhouse or gas station restroom. Although extremely rare, if it is critical for successful aurora borealis viewing, we have, on rare occasions, not had access to facilities. If this should occur, the woods are always available as a last resort.
Question: Can we have a private tour?
Yes, if you are willing to purchase all 10 available spots on a tour and nobody has booked that date yet.
Question: Can we have a "self-drive tour" with you, or follow the tour to help us find clear sky if we are willing to pay full price if the tour is sold out or full?
No. For safety and liability reasons, we can't do this.
It is extremely dangerous, for you and for the tour group, if you try to follow us. We do not know everyone's snow tires, winter driving ability, and how alert you will be behind the wheel late at night, so you could easily crash into us, especially if we have to aggressively brake for a moose. We carry extensive emergency equipment to enable us to survive at 40 below or other extreme conditions, even in the event of a total breakdown of the tour van, including the ability to stay warm and call for help with satellite communications when we are out of cell range. We can't possibly vet your equipment, extreme cold and winter driving experience, and circadian rhythm promptly to ensure you are safe. If you do any viewing of your own with your own rental car, please never drive outside of cell range for your own safety. Also, please never use the road as your aurora viewing platform. Even on remote roads that often have zero traffic at night, they can get unexpected traffic, and you are risking your life if you set up in the road for photos or use the road to park your car. We have never seen anyone out in a rental car be properly prepared, and people in private cars have died in the nearby wilderness before.
Question: Can children go on the tour?
Yes, we leave this up to the discretion of their guardians. The children's guardians are responsible for supplying any car seats needed for safety and legal compliance. Extremely young children tend to sleep for the whole or most of the tour. The cost of a tour spot for a minor is the same as for an adult. We have had many older children thoroughly enjoy the tour in the past with their guardians. Overall, we have had infants through 90 year olds on the tour.
Question: Do you offer winter clothing rentals?
No. We have suggestions on what to bring here. Winter rental gear is available from Alaska Element, a locally owned winter clothing rental company. They offer warm clothing packages and will even deliver to your hotel and pick it up when you are done. https://alaskaelement.com/
Question: What lens should I get for my Nikon DX sensor camera (D3000 and D5000 series cameras)?
Check our blog post here, other camera brands and sensor size suggestion coming soon.
Question: Is seeing the northern lights guaranteed?
The local visitors association advertises that if you spend 3 nights out looking for the aurora, you have a 90% chance of seeing the northern lights. If you back out the numbers to a single night, it would come out to roughly a 53% chance for any single night, but our internal numbers show us photographing the aurora on roughly 90% of all our tours! This is the evidence that chasing the lights as we do MASSIVELY increases your chances of seeing northern lights and if you miss out, you can hop on another tour as our stand-by guest at no cost within 30 days of your original tour. If other operators don't advertise their success rate, you can bet it is far lower than ours and closer to the average 53%. We do not guarantee the aurora because it does not happen 100% of the time but the fact remains that the more time you plan on spending looking for it, the closer your odds get to 100% so we suggest planning more than one night.
Where does the tour go?
We have many, perhaps over one hundred, locations we have used for viewing the aurora borealis. Like a fisherman trying to keep his fishing holes secret, we do not publish where we go specifically. This helps ensure future guests have a private location. We try to stay within 2 hours or about 100 miles of Fairbanks. On rare occasions, when required to see the aurora borealis, we will chase farther.
Question: Do you offer a discount for (fill in the blank)?
Our aurora chasing tour is specifically designed to be different. We made the decision at our inception to offer a tour to give you the very best chance possible of enjoying our famous northern lights while also offering a high quality, informative, photo tour with a small group and local guide. In short, our business strategy is to compete on quality, not price. Furthermore, our guests' age, camera or lack of, veteran status, etc., doesn't change the business costs we incur. We could charge everybody else more to lower the price for certain groups of people, and many businesses around the country do that, but we choose to offer all people the same price.
What makes your tour different?
Many other operations put as many people as they can in a fixed location (cabin, yurt, etc) and often use multiple vans to shuttle people to the site or full-sized buses. Imagine several dozen people all in a small area, all shining their flashlights around. Anyone who has done stargazing before knows this is the opposite of what you want. This actually happens and is extremely damaging to our own natural night vision and messes up photos of the northern light. We don't like it that way and want to offer you a better way. While everyone is at the mercy of the weather, we have found by chasing we have seen it many times when everyone else at a stationary location near Fairbanks has been clouded out. By traveling to the areas with the best forecasts, we have found we can be successful and bring you the aurora far more frequently than the average operation. Our internal numbers show us photographing it on about 88% of all of our tours and if you miss the aurora, you hop on another one of our tours in the next 30 days as a stand-by guest at no additional cost.
What is the Cancellation Policy?
If the cancellation request is made more than one month before the tour date, your booking is fully refundable. Within a month of your tour date, we have a no-cancellation / no-refund policy. If we choose to cancel your tour, for example, due to extreme winter weather, you will receive a full refund. We are very successful at finding the northern lights, but ultimately, we are at the mercy of Mother Nature for space weather and Earth weather. We do not cancel for cloudy forecasts or slow aurora forecasts because we have found with our “chasing” format that even if the weather forecast for Fairbanks is cloudy, we typically can drive to weather more suitable for viewing. Aurora forecasts generally can’t be accurately made more than 1 hour into the future - yes, they are made up to 27 days out, but beyond an hour out, they have a low degree of accuracy and are commonly misinterpreted. In the unlikely event that you do not get to see the aurora on your tour, per our discretion, you may book another tour that departs no later than 30 days after your initial tour at no cost as a “standby” guest. We have a no-refund policy within one month of the tour date, so if you need to be covered for this time frame, please buy travelers’ insurance ahead of time.
Anytime your personal schedule allows from August 21st to April 21st is a good time. We find April to be the best of all months due to historic average weather being more favorable. More information can be found here.
Question: Are there restroom breaks?
On the vast majority of our tours, we stop at an outhouse or gas station restroom. Although extremely rare, if it is critical for successful aurora borealis viewing, we have, on rare occasions, not had access to facilities. If this should occur, the woods are always available as a last resort.
Question: Can we have a private tour?
Yes, if you are willing to purchase all 10 available spots on a tour and nobody has booked that date yet.
Question: Can we have a "self-drive tour" with you, or follow the tour to help us find clear sky if we are willing to pay full price if the tour is sold out or full?
No. For safety and liability reasons, we can't do this.
It is extremely dangerous, for you and for the tour group, if you try to follow us. We do not know everyone's snow tires, winter driving ability, and how alert you will be behind the wheel late at night, so you could easily crash into us, especially if we have to aggressively brake for a moose. We carry extensive emergency equipment to enable us to survive at 40 below or other extreme conditions, even in the event of a total breakdown of the tour van, including the ability to stay warm and call for help with satellite communications when we are out of cell range. We can't possibly vet your equipment, extreme cold and winter driving experience, and circadian rhythm promptly to ensure you are safe. If you do any viewing of your own with your own rental car, please never drive outside of cell range for your own safety. Also, please never use the road as your aurora viewing platform. Even on remote roads that often have zero traffic at night, they can get unexpected traffic, and you are risking your life if you set up in the road for photos or use the road to park your car. We have never seen anyone out in a rental car be properly prepared, and people in private cars have died in the nearby wilderness before.
Question: Can children go on the tour?
Yes, we leave this up to the discretion of their guardians. The children's guardians are responsible for supplying any car seats needed for safety and legal compliance. Extremely young children tend to sleep for the whole or most of the tour. The cost of a tour spot for a minor is the same as for an adult. We have had many older children thoroughly enjoy the tour in the past with their guardians. Overall, we have had infants through 90 year olds on the tour.
Question: Do you offer winter clothing rentals?
No. We have suggestions on what to bring here. Winter rental gear is available from Alaska Element, a locally owned winter clothing rental company. They offer warm clothing packages and will even deliver to your hotel and pick it up when you are done. https://alaskaelement.com/
Question: What lens should I get for my Nikon DX sensor camera (D3000 and D5000 series cameras)?
Check our blog post here, other camera brands and sensor size suggestion coming soon.
Question: Is seeing the northern lights guaranteed?
The local visitors association advertises that if you spend 3 nights out looking for the aurora, you have a 90% chance of seeing the northern lights. If you back out the numbers to a single night, it would come out to roughly a 53% chance for any single night, but our internal numbers show us photographing the aurora on roughly 90% of all our tours! This is the evidence that chasing the lights as we do MASSIVELY increases your chances of seeing northern lights and if you miss out, you can hop on another tour as our stand-by guest at no cost within 30 days of your original tour. If other operators don't advertise their success rate, you can bet it is far lower than ours and closer to the average 53%. We do not guarantee the aurora because it does not happen 100% of the time but the fact remains that the more time you plan on spending looking for it, the closer your odds get to 100% so we suggest planning more than one night.
Where does the tour go?
We have many, perhaps over one hundred, locations we have used for viewing the aurora borealis. Like a fisherman trying to keep his fishing holes secret, we do not publish where we go specifically. This helps ensure future guests have a private location. We try to stay within 2 hours or about 100 miles of Fairbanks. On rare occasions, when required to see the aurora borealis, we will chase farther.
Question: Do you offer a discount for (fill in the blank)?
Our aurora chasing tour is specifically designed to be different. We made the decision at our inception to offer a tour to give you the very best chance possible of enjoying our famous northern lights while also offering a high quality, informative, photo tour with a small group and local guide. In short, our business strategy is to compete on quality, not price. Furthermore, our guests' age, camera or lack of, veteran status, etc., doesn't change the business costs we incur. We could charge everybody else more to lower the price for certain groups of people, and many businesses around the country do that, but we choose to offer all people the same price.
What makes your tour different?
Many other operations put as many people as they can in a fixed location (cabin, yurt, etc) and often use multiple vans to shuttle people to the site or full-sized buses. Imagine several dozen people all in a small area, all shining their flashlights around. Anyone who has done stargazing before knows this is the opposite of what you want. This actually happens and is extremely damaging to our own natural night vision and messes up photos of the northern light. We don't like it that way and want to offer you a better way. While everyone is at the mercy of the weather, we have found by chasing we have seen it many times when everyone else at a stationary location near Fairbanks has been clouded out. By traveling to the areas with the best forecasts, we have found we can be successful and bring you the aurora far more frequently than the average operation. Our internal numbers show us photographing it on about 88% of all of our tours and if you miss the aurora, you hop on another one of our tours in the next 30 days as a stand-by guest at no additional cost.
What is the Cancellation Policy?
If the cancellation request is made more than one month before the tour date, your booking is fully refundable. Within a month of your tour date, we have a no-cancellation / no-refund policy. If we choose to cancel your tour, for example, due to extreme winter weather, you will receive a full refund. We are very successful at finding the northern lights, but ultimately, we are at the mercy of Mother Nature for space weather and Earth weather. We do not cancel for cloudy forecasts or slow aurora forecasts because we have found with our “chasing” format that even if the weather forecast for Fairbanks is cloudy, we typically can drive to weather more suitable for viewing. Aurora forecasts generally can’t be accurately made more than 1 hour into the future - yes, they are made up to 27 days out, but beyond an hour out, they have a low degree of accuracy and are commonly misinterpreted. In the unlikely event that you do not get to see the aurora on your tour, per our discretion, you may book another tour that departs no later than 30 days after your initial tour at no cost as a “standby” guest. We have a no-refund policy within one month of the tour date, so if you need to be covered for this time frame, please buy travelers’ insurance ahead of time.