Winter Camping in the Boundary Waters, Part 2

In Part 1 of "Winter Camping in the Boundary Waters" I covered the basic steps before hitting the trail. Often the trips start out at Wintergreen Dogsledding Lodge and we leave the dog yard with loaded sleds, the guides driving the sleds down onto tie-out posts on White Iron Lake with the participants walking ahead of teams and guides on the narrow and sloped trail down to the lake. Other times the dogs are loaded into our large trailer with sleds put on top and all is hauled out to an end-of-road location.
The first day of participants mushing (handling and running) the dogs is usually chaotic but also quite amazing as most of the beginner dog mushers are able to put their classroom learning into the team that they are controlling with good effect. Yes, there are lost sleds and tangles due to inattention to the tenets taught to the participants, but basically I'm amazed that the trips begin as smoothly as they do.
Dog mushing is far removed from the lives of many of the participants, who are more used to their minds doing their work for them. in their everyday lives. Those who are involved in regular athletic pursuits and sports usually have an easier time of handling the dogs and trail occurrences.
We end up leaving in the afternoon and if the trip is in the short days of December, January or February we can only go for a few hours before we're forced to stop and set up camp. There is always the hustle of stopping and rushing to unpack the sleds, set up tents, spud in a water hole, gather firewood, set up the tripod and fire plate, and all of this after getting the dogs strung out on the cable picket lines and their harnesses taken off.
Food at breakfast and dinner is always hardy, with a high calorie count. Evening pizza tortillas as appetizers, the main course being stir fried shrimp and vegetables with sweet and sour sauce or meat balls and pasta with a spaghetti sauce followed by no-bake cheese cake. Breakfast may start with cinnamon and brown sugar on fried-in-butter bagels, followed by fried eggs and hash browns. Both meals are liberally lubricated and warmed by hot drinks: coffee or various teas, hot tang, cappuccino, or cocoa. The whole meal is a 2 hour affair with all participants hunkering down around the wood stove, or more typically the fire pan on sleeping pads arranged on top of logs, everyone soaking in the campfire's heat. Participants are discouraged from drinking liquids following the meal, so that they would be less likely to need to exit their sleeping bag in the middle of the night.
Feeding the dogs takes place after the people are fed, though the kibbled dog food is hopefully soaking up warm water for a long time before the dogs are fed.
Wintergreen's camping programs have always adhered to a hard-core image of cold camping (without heat other than a campfire) and for the truly rugged there is the discarding of even a tent - sleeping out, right on the ice and snow in the sleep unit. The guides generally sleep out or in the dogsled. I guess the dog sled pinpoints where the guide is, for the participant in distress, who is otherwise confronted with which black mound out on the snow is the guide. For the participant who is prematurely in distress just thinking about sleeping out in a winter camping trip, we tell them that they will surely not sleep too soundly the first night but that the second night everyone will sleep undisturbed... By the time the second night comes around, everyone is too committed deep in the wilderness if not too exhausted to bail on the trip.

The trips may break camp every day, traveling to a different area each day; or if the group and conditions dictate we may break camp and travel on the second day out, then base camp and do day trips. It is nice to travel to a new area, either for a day trip or to set up a new camp. The figuring out of a good place to camp is always a challenge - a place that has a good stake-out location for the dogs, that is sheltered from wind and has good firewood and a clear water source have to be considered.

When the camp site is chosen the first thing to be done is getting the stake-out cables out and unspooled and connected to trees or deadfalls. Usually the guides do this and the participants mind their dogs and sleds, which are typically on ice with nothing to anchor them to with the trailing lines. Then the dogs are put on the stakeout lines in order of teams. Once that is done the harnesses are removed. The sleds are hurriedly unpacked and camp is established, a water hole is chopped and spudded for water while some people forage for firewood and others set up tents and prepare the firepan and tripod with seating.
After the camp chores are done, the participants have time for themselves. This may mean taking a walk, or preparing for the night by organizing their tent or sleep system. There is always something to do and seldom are people idle.


Teams halted on a lake after going over a rough portage. On the first team, in the foreground, the "lead musher is keeping the dogs lined out while the "sled musher" keeps the brake on.

Around the campfire at night. The tripod is used to hang a large water boiler for drinking water. Each camper is a spoon, bowl and cup for all the eating that they will do at breakfast and dinner. Lunches are generally not cooked but consist of hot water in thermoses for ramen or other instant soups, hot drinks, jerky, string cheese, nuts, candy bars and other finger foods. If it is really cold we will sometimes have a noon campfire.
Notice how the snow and some ice has melted under the fire pan.

A camping sled all loaded on the trail along a bit of fast water near a portage trail.

Winter Camping In The BWCAW Pt.3

On The Trail

This wide-open trail that we are using was made by ice fishermen on Farm Lake, using their pick-up trucks with snow plow blades. The fishermen generally set their tip-ups close up to the boundary that separates the designated wilderness. Often ice fishermen go into the Boundary Waters wilderness, pulling a light sled or toboggan to favored fishing spots for a days fishing through the ice. Greg Drum is the skier who is guiding the sleds so that they stay on our route rather than turn right onto another trail. I am the skier up ahead, leading the dog team train.

Looking ahead at a beaver lodge to the right of center in the picture. I'm using skate skis on this day, which is a great treat to use when conditions are right.

Viewing a wolf kill of a deer. When we came up to the edge of the lake off of a portage trail, eagles and ravens flew up. We weren't yet in view of the kill site, but stopped the dog teams as we knew that the leavings of the wolf pack's dinner were just ahead. The wolves must have brought the white tail down just a few hours earlier, as the rib cage and other parts were still intact. The wolves were probably listening and watching us as we viewed the site and then went back and had our lunch as well.

Wolf tracks and bits of fur were all that was left at the site where the deer was taken down.

Winter's Last Blast?

It's not that we weren't expecting this blizzard, if a person listened to any weather report...
The winds from the northeast started yesterday morning and gusts (up to 30 mph) were soon buffeting the landscape and shaking any object that was vertical. Muir's canoe, which has wintered this year under an apple tree, was blown by the wind 20 feet to the bumper of our old GMC truck. Last night the snow and sleet started in and continued all day today and is still happening.as of this night.
The migrating juncos and red polls and robins are having a difficult time finding food. I threw down some sunflower seeds as well as filled the feeders and all day there were birds mobbing the area, in spite of the wind. Even some starlings at the suet.
Muir took off into the teeth of the storm , heading to Marquette for classwork that he had to do at the hospital there. He took his old 4 WD Toyota truck. He's staying at Fillmore's house for the 2 day trip.

At least for at least a little while I'll be skiing. Lynn is happily working as manager of the floral dept. at Econo Foods which is a relatively short drive from here, pays well and she really enjoys the work.

April 12---- Still mist snowing and gray mono chrome skies and world. No big wind gusts. Great for skiing!

Ski Mornings

Morning is the prime time around here because of the freeze that occurs at night. If you linger abed or don't allow time before your day job, you will inevitably lose the frozen snow to the warmth of the day.
For myself, after I get back from a guiding journey, I need a number of days to recover from both trip and travel. As I've gotten older the time needed for recovery hasn't decreased. So it took me a few days after arriving back home from the Arrowhead of MN to get back into a healthy exercise regimen.
Good exercise at this season means skiing; either early morning Keweenaw crust through the bush, or the very controlled exercise of skate skiing at the world class, groomed MTU trails that are less than a mile from my house.
Today is supposed to go to 40 degrees Fahrenheit, so with the sun beating down, one must get in a ski while the temperatures keep the snow hard. So, for a few mornings now I've got in my ski by at least mid-morning. The MTU trails are freshly groomed and appealing in their wide lanes through the mixed hardwood and conifer forest. The trails wend through hills and forest, pass within sight, at this leafless season, of roads and a few buildings. I park at the Pilgrim Rd. lot, which is close to my house and usually nearly vacant, but the main lot is always with cars and local skiers coming and going. Though I am a solitary skier by temperament, I do enjoy seeing a few skiers on the trails who are invariably happy to be out. On the occasion that I see someone who I know, it is nice to stop our sliding and talk for a minute or two.
As the morning rolls on I begin to notice areas of the trail that have direct sunlight becoming slushy and slow - a sign that signals the time to head home for chores and correspondence.
Some of my thoughts as the ski season wanes begin to turn to the waterways that are beginning to open and show signs of the migrating spring weather, though as Dan at Downwind Sports said the other day, "Some are saying that this year we may be out skiing on the trails into May."
I don't think there is better exercise for my back than skiing every day. I'll reluctantly give it up soon as the trails and ground turns bare.


A typically wide piece of trail at MTU. The university invested into what were simple and unimproved narrow woods trails to turn them over the last 5 years into a world-class Nordic ski facility.

A freshly groomed trail for skate skiing on. My skis were the first to be on this trail the other morning. Like skiing in a park, which I guess the trail system is. Jeff Parker and an old acquaintance from Eagle, Alaska, Jim Meese, do the grooming of the trails.

At the trail head parking lot on the MTU Campus. The waxing room and other team rooms are to the right. The skiers, and later, mountain bikers enter the trail system from here.

A chery wood paddle blank that I cut out recently is being planed thin on our back deck. I cut out an ash blank as well, both of which I hope will see use later this spring on the water.

April 1, 2008 After the Spring Snowstorm

STEPPING OFF THE TRAIL

Lynn coming back from the first clothes line hanging of laundry for the new year. Though the snow in the morning has the frozen boiler plate "Keweenaw Crust" that makes such good go-anywhere skiing, when it is thawing out the settled snow-slush will give way, sometimes even on the compacted trail.

April 1, 2008 Snowstorm

April Fools Day in the Keweenaw, after a spring snowstorm. The Upper Peninsula below us got the bulk of the snow. We got just 4 inches of wet, heavy fluff and a lot of wind to blow it around.
The picture above shows not just the paltry 4 inches of new snow, but also the last half of this winter's compacted-to-ice snow that has been slipping off the garage roof the last few days, and will lay in ice slabbed glory, to melt where it falls. The temperature today was a sunny 34 degrees with a prediction of 40 for tomorrow.

On the late afternoon of the last day of March (yesterday), as meteorologists predicted, the snow started to fall fast, adding to the thick, compacted snow that has been slowly, intermittently melting.
This is a winter that I feel relief experiencing - the first old-fashioned or "regular" winter in a decade - a winter that has held off from having regular thaws and instead has been cold and with ample snow that came early and is leaving late. Since my childhood I have felt a regular disappointment that our climate was warming when compared to what grandparents, parents and elders told me about their winters at the beginning of the 20th century. Now, with the irrefutable evidence of climate change shown in the news and in our environment, having a winter with regular cold and snow (both of which were lacking in the subarctic Alaskan interior for much of this winter) was a real relief. To the wimpy malcontents that I've listened to in the Keweenaw and Ely, MN regions, whining about the winter, " Please go south to the doldrums of heat and humidity. If you don't like winter, don't live here!"

Last night the wind started to blow gusts of 39 mph when I went to bed. Before I got into bed I remembered that I had left the extension ladder up against the chimney so moved it off the chimney before the wind blew it off.
In the morning the wind had diminished and the gray, stormy skies began to show sun by late morning. Lynn and I decided to bring the dogs and go skiing on the MTU trails up the road. Our no wax skis needed glide wax to keep the skis from slowing to a stop with clumping snow. The trail we followed was freshly groomed and it was a leisurely time for us as well as the dogs.

I cut out 2 canoe paddle blanks yesterday - one a cherry wood, the other an ash. I really like the deck for working on them during the spring, with its south facing orientation and its view of bird feeders, field fringed by woods and little creek valley. Lynn shoveled it this afternoon and it looks like it is ready for paddle carving and relaxing again.

Jeff Hull's "Streams of Consciousness" and the loss of species

As I sit here this morning by the fire, after reading a few stories in Jeff Hull's Streams of Consciousness, I think about Hull's stream fishing in North and South America. He writes of the grayling fishing in Montana and always in "Chasing Grayling" there is a sense of loss -- of the Grayling fish, of parts of the stream ecosystem to human development, of the loss of Hull's spiritually sensitive experience on the Big Hole River. Hull watched a young fisherman catch and injure the same fish that Hull had carefully caught and released earlier that day. Hull's sorrow and rage at the "progress" wrought by man that means a loss of whole wild nature runs like an undertow through the sea of his beautifully written descriptions of waters that he has fished.
In "Knots" Hull uses the metaphor of fishing knots to look at, among other things, the knots that people's desire end up making in trying to possess wild nature - trophy homes, loss of wildlife habitat, pollution of air, water and sight - not a rant by the author but a measured plaint to what is loss for everything living.
In "Estancia del Zorro" a University writing project about the impact of free trade on a fully capitalist Chile leads to a Patagonian fishing trip. Amidst rapidly rising extractive industries, unburdened by environmental regulations, Hull fishes on a guided trout fishing excursion in the relatively under-fished Patagonian streams. Here, his guide Rodrigo dreams of going to flight school to learn to fly helicopters so he can guide fishermen to waters that are unfished by anyone, an example of modern man's drive to "progress" beyond where other men have been, to make a mark for oneself in a new way.
Though I have focused on just one current in the stream of Jeff Hull's writing, to the exclusion of his Hemingway-like description of sporting people, dogs, waters and woods, what I came away from was the bittersweet sense of Hull's and my loss - of our youth, of innocence, of part of our birthright to land and water that is healthy, where man is not the dominant species. Yes, the wild is still out there, but it is mostly just background to man's dominance and "progress".