Wilderness Wedding

We celebrated in a big way at Wintergreen Dogsled Lodge this weekend. Sunday was the marriage of two wilderness guides, Dave Freeman and Amy Voytilla. The couple planned an unusual wedding. Guests rode dogsleds, skied, or hiked to the wedding site – a campsite on the shores of White Iron Lake near Ely, MN. The…

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Canadian Lynx Tracks

We came across these tracks on Pipestone Bay of Basswood Lake recently. My first thought was of a massively oversized rabbit. They’re obviously too large to be a Snowshoe Hare, but they have a similar repeating pattern. I had a hunch on the tracks’ true origin, and checked with Tom Rusch at the DNR to…

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Sled-joring

Kids come up with the darndest of ideas! I’ve been guiding a parent-child trip, and we spent this afternoon playing on the lake by the lodge with a few dogs. Everybody tried skiing, and even those who were total beginners stayed upright much of the time. The skiing was a quick introduction to the next…

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North Pole Shakedown

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…

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