Every winter, adventurous sorts come to the woods outside of Ely to prepare for attempts to reach the North Pole by dogsled or ski. It is an opportunity for these people to see how their cold weather systems perform and learn skills for dogsledding and cold weather travel and camping. We call these North Pole…
Layne Kennedy is at Wintergreen Dogsled Lodge this week leading a dogsledding photo workshop. I’m one of the dogsled guides on the trip. It is a joy to work with Layne and absorb his contagious enthusiasm. Layne is a professional magazine and nature photographer. At the beginning of the photo workshop week, participants draw “assignments”…
The recent wet snow has wreaked havoc with area trails. Though the snow-covered trees make a winter-wonderland scene from the highways, drooping trees and branches have seriously restricted travel on winter dogsled and ski routes through the woods in the boundary waters. Most of our dogsledding trails are outside the BWCAW, and therefore we’ve been…
This video shows the actual birth of Lily the Black Bear’s cub near Ely, MN, around noon today. You will see the cub’s paw reach out from behind Lily’s leg and hear the cub’s sounds as it cries out for the first time. I just spoke again with Dr. Rogers and he says that Lily…
The first ever live broadcast of the birth of a wild black bear cub is being broadcast on the web. The North American Bear Center (http://www.bear.org/) near Ely has placed a special live camera in Lily the Black Bear’s den to record this event. Click here for the Black Bear Cam. I just got off…
People often ask me what dogsled guides do on our days off. I tell them that our days off tend to look a lot like our days on. For example, I had this week off from guiding to celebrate a late Christmas with my parents who visited from Iowa. What did I find myself doing…
With low temps around 30 degrees below zero, we cracked open some hand and foot warmers for the dogsledding trip this week. I just finished guiding a trip with a nice family from near New York City. It turns out one of them worked as a hand and foot model. She really appreciated the hand…
The dogsled camping group this week is game for just about anything. I really like their eagerness to try new things. Today the whole group joined in to build a traditional snow shelter called a quinzee. The above photo shows our finished product. A quinzee is made by hollowing out a pile of settled snow.…
My first dogsled camping trip of the season launched this week. It is four days and three nights on trail. This morning around the campfire Jen (a guest from Minneapolis) peaks into the breakfast pot and says: “Hhmm. That looks delicious. Uh, this may sound awful, but when I first saw thatI thought it was…
Before restrictions on motors in the BWCAW, land-based motorized vehicles made their way into some remote places. For example, this old International Harvester bus transported passengers across the Four Mile Portage between Fall Lake and Hoist Bay on Basswood Lake. The passengers would be either starting a canoe trip or going to one of the…