LIFESTYLE At the North and South Poles, Explorers Set Their Own Time Zones

Stephanie is an adventure travel journalist and photographer. Her long journeys to the ends of the earth and seas have taught her to perceive time in a very unique way. The Edge Magazine was intrigued by the concept of time at the poles, where the sun sometimes never sets.

Our lives revolve around earth’s time zones. Mathematicians and engineers created these guidelines to streamline business during the dawn of the railroad in the late 1800s; their proposals divided the planet up into 24 roughly 15-degree-wide slivers based on the position of the sun.

The timekeeping invention systematized time around the world, but there are two places in particular where the global standard coordinated universal time (UTC) doesn’t mean a thing: the geographic north and south poles.

Time zones are based on longitudinal lines, which converge at the geographic north and south poles. That means the poles contain every single time zone, or no time zone at all. The fact the poles experience sunlight differently than most of the world—more on that later—only adds to the time confusion.

While the idea of a place without set hours may sound discombobulating, it’s also quite freeing. Polar explorers determine and follow their own time zones when journeying to these far-flung pockets of our planet. And, while I’ve yet to traverse the north and south poles, shirking the structures of time has helped me uncover and report on some of Earth’s most surreal after-hours marvels.

Many travel itineraries revolve around daylight, but an early obsession with the northern lights helped me realize just how much magic occurs in a destination’s off hours. These days, I’ve made a career out of it.

Take the Amazon. While daytime trips here parade the biome’s wonders, from boating to see flocks of colorful parrots to traversing sky-high canopy walks to admire life in the treetops, the rainforest really comes alive at night—a fact I learned firsthand in the Ecuadorian Amazon. I spent a week exploring the inky after-dark forest, an action-packed rotation of listening to choruses of frogs and cicadas erupt at dusk; watching for bright caiman eyes, and glow worms, from the seat of a moonlit canoe; and trekking the jungle among giant anteaters, tarantulas, and snakes (and countless other critters that saw me, even if I couldn’t spy them).

Just like the bustling Amazon, marine life doesn’t conform to human’s time standards, and a dive to see the diel vertical migration makes that clear. Sunset tells beachcombers it’s time for bed, yet out at sea, the sinking orange orb marks the beginning of the nightly migration of billions upon billions of sea creatures. These zooplankton, fish, shrimp, and jellies soar from the ocean’s dim twilight zone to the water’s surface, where they feed then descend before first light. This nightly movement pattern, the equivalent of running a six-mile race at twice the speed of an Olympian, is visible only to divers willing to ditch time zones and stay up late for a blacklight-illuminated scuba trip, available around the world, from Florida to the Cook Islands.

The convergence of time zones isn’t the only reason hour-tracking in the geographic north and south pole can feel puzzling. Equally peculiar is the fact the sun only rises and sets in the poles one time per year—a phenomenon due to the tilt of Earth’s axis.

In the north pole, the sun climbs above the horizon on the March equinox. It stays up—creating 24 hours of light, known as the midnight sun—until September’s autumn equinox. The south pole is just the opposite. During that time frame in the south pole, the sun never rises. The region experiences what’s known as polar night. Then come September, it welcomes all-hours daylight while the north pole transitions to endless dark. 

While the poles experience the most dramatic sunlight variations, the effect unfurls across the Arctic regions. Communities in places like northern Norway and Alaska have long coexisted with these drastic hours of daylight and dark. Increasingly, adventure travelers can soak up the wonder of the long-lit nights, or all-hours dusk, too. 

Conversely, while the inky polar night may sound haunting, it presents one of the best opportunities to see the northern lights. In 2019, I visited Iceland in mid-December to chase auroras. While the weather threw all sorts of curveballs—I got caught in not one but two snowstorms, including one that nearly shut down the country—I found the lack of daylight just as wild. In the dead of day, the sun barely kissed the horizon before dipping below it again. 

The long hours of night mean extended hours for aurora hunting, and that’s exactly why I, and a growing number of northern lights chasers, make the trip despite few hours of sun. Even more extreme is Svalbard, Norway, among the world’s northernmost inhabited places, where winter gets and remains so dark that lights chasers can even see the auroras over lunch.

As I’ve learned from dozens of twilight adventures, exploring the world after dark requires gear fit for the job. That’s where the TAG Heuer Aquaracer Professional 300 comes into play. This adventure-ready sports and dive watch, powered by the automatic Calibre 5, features large, Super-LumiNova hands and an easy-to-read dial that’s easy to interpret even in the darkest conditions. This helps with keeping track of the time during night hikes, or while chasing the northern lights. The TAG Heuer Aquaracer GMT, which has a unidirectional ceramic bezel and a dive scale, is particularly great for scuba adventures, whether it’s a daytime outing with sea turtles and colorful fish or night dives to see the sparkly and awe-inspiring diel vertical migration.