The rescue chain in the snow drift

Hazard lights were blinking in the dark ahead of us. We were on a gravel road in the south east of Iceland, off the main highway, heading for our accommodation near the mountains, about two kilometres from a massive glacier. We had just bumped over a couple of smaller snow drifts ourselves, so we knew exactly what those lights meant. A small 2WD car was sitting nose-deep in a bigger drift that had blown right across the road, and it was going nowhere.

We pulled over and got out. The driver was a Kiwi, and his car had no chance in that snow. The drift was maybe 20 to 30 centimetres deep, which does not sound like much until it packs under the car and lifts the wheels just far enough off the ground that they spin uselessly.

So we got to work. Mostly it was kicking snow out from under the axle, over and over, trying to get the car’s weight back onto its wheels. My head torch made all the difference. With it we could actually see where the snow was still piled high under the car, holding the wheels up and stopping them from getting any traction. Without it we would have been guessing in the dark.

Somewhere in those thirty minutes he picked up on our accents. “Oh, you’re Aussies? Thanks so much mate, I really appreciate it.” Whatever New Zealand and Australia normally hold against each other, none of it survives a snow drift.

After half an hour of kicking and scraping, the car was ready. He got in, we pushed from behind, and the little 2WD finally came free. Handshakes all round. He was genuinely grateful and lovely about the whole thing. Then he said something that should have been a warning. “Hey, I’ll just drive forward a bit and wait, in case you get stuck too.” I thought to myself, pfff, we have a 4WD, that won’t happen.

We got back in, feeling quietly heroic. The problem was that we had parked close behind the drift, so there was no run-up to speak of. We drove forward, hit the snow with nowhere near enough speed, and stopped dead with the wheels spinning. Stuck. In the same drift. About a minute after freeing someone else from it.

“Oh, damn,” was all I managed. Steffi just laughed, which was fair. We climbed back out into the cold, and the Kiwi came back to us, exactly as he had said he would.

The three of us did the same job again, this time on our car, clearing snow away from the tyres and out from under the middle of the chassis. Somewhere in there came the trick of turning the steering wheel all the way left, then all the way right, so the front wheels could carve out some space and find something to bite on. I honestly cannot remember which of us thought of it, but it worked. With him helping, we were out in five minutes. Thirty minutes for his car, five for ours, and this time it was our turn to be grateful. He waved, we waved, and both cars finally made it through.

At the accommodation we cooked instant noodles and followed them with marzipan, the dinner of champions. Steffi was excited about something else entirely, because the forecast said this might finally be the night.

For the whole previous week we had been checking the aurora space-weather map every single day. Every night it let us down, either the solar activity was too weak or it was too cloudy. Seven nights of nothing. Tonight the map showed good space weather and minimal cloud, and Steffi felt lucky.

We went outside into the freezing wind and could barely see anything. Just a faint pale glow above the horizon, easy to dismiss. Then we took a long-exposure photo, and there it was on the screen, unmistakably green. The camera could see what our eyes could not.

Out came the tripod and our little DJI action camera, our GoPro equivalent, set to long-exposure mode, and we started collecting photos in the wind. Then we turned to the left. Proper green stripes, right across the sky, with a red shimmer above them. Dim to the naked eye, but amazing on camera. We both screamed like little girls and ran to the next hill to get a better angle.

We stayed out for half an hour, freezing, checking each new photo, until Steffi could not handle the cold any more and went inside. After seven nights of nothing, we finally had our aurora. I stayed out alone and set the camera up for a time lapse of long-exposure shots, then went inside to thaw out for forty-five minutes while it kept shooting. Then I walked back out into the dark to collect the camera.