North Via South: Alaska, the Last Frontier

This post concludes our yearlong coverage of Magda Biernat and Ian Webster’s journey from Antarctica to Alaska. The couple, who began their travels in January, write:

We entered Alaska on Thanksgiving Day, eleven months and nine thousand ninety-nine miles north of Antarctica. The largest state in the union welcomed us with plummeting temperatures, surreal displays of the Northern Lights, and its quirky brand of frontier living. In order to truly push our polar extremes, we flew from Fairbanks to Barrow, where the sun never cracked the horizon and the indigenous Inupiat community was preparing for months of total darkness. Together we stared in awe at the broken ice floe edging the Arctic Ocean, then turned to look back on the dwindling light in the south. It was a slow-simmering dusk, the last light of the year and the culmination of our journey north.

Click through the slide show to see Magda’s photographs from Alaska; below is a GIF of the elusive aurora borealis. More slide shows from their journey are archived on The New Yorker. You can read a more in-depth recounting on their blog.

The aurora borealis on a clear night in Barrow. As we were shooting, a policeman rolled up and told us to go back inside—a polar bear was heading our way.