Alaska Botanical Garden holiday walk lights up the woods in East Anchorage

Updated: December 24, 2021 Published: December 23, 2021

People walk under an arch of lights during the Alaska Botanical Garden Holiday Lights show in Anchorage on Wednesday, Dec. 22, 2021. (Emily Mesner / ADN)

This year’s Alaska Botanical Garden Holiday Lights show saw sold-out crowds leading up to Christmas.

The half-mile loop trail was illuminated by glowing ice luminarias, colorful trees and hanging lights. Farther into the wooded garden, tunnels of red, green and white lights lit the way as groups stopped for family photos and children giggled and ran under them.

There are at least 20,000 individual lights within the entire display, including 12 lighted 40-foot-tall spruce trees.

The event also features kicksledding, a model train exhibit and fire pit warming stations.

In its fourth year, the Holiday Lights show began at the end of November and will continue next week through the end of January. For more information on dates and times, or to purchase tickets, visit alaskabg.org.

Mindy Halverson pushes her son in a sled under a small tunnel of lights on Wednesday. (Emily Mesner / ADN)

People walk along a trail and pass a decorated tree. (Emily Mesner / ADN)

Tyler Awad, center, poses for a photograph with his nieces Dani Kostlin, 3, and Shae Kostlin, 5, while looking at a display in the Alaska Botanical Garden Holiday Lights show. (Emily Mesner / ADN)

Christina Sinnott, right, and her sister Michelle Sinnott, left, walk under an arch of lights. (Emily Mesner / ADN)

Fresh snow is frozen in place on top of a tree that is wrapped in colorful lights during the Alaska Botanical Garden Holiday Lights show. (Emily Mesner / ADN)

Emily Mesner

Emily Mesner is a multimedia journalist for the Anchorage Daily News. She previously worked for the National Park Service at Denali National Park and Preserve and the Western Arctic National Parklands in Kotzebue, at the Cordova Times and at the Jackson Citizen Patriot in Jackson, Michigan.