These Paper Birch seeds fell from the catkins on the tree shown in the Jan. 17 post. The seeds gathered on the snow beneath the tree. Then, a slight breeze swept some of them into animal tracks, making it look like someone painted animal tracks in the snow. They’re possibly snowshow hare tracks. This is…
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These are a couple of the massive snow-filled plywood forms sitting in Whiteside Park in Ely. Once the snow settles, the forms are removed and the resulting snow cube is the blank slate for snow carvers. The Ely Winter Festival begins on February 6. The Festival highlight is the International Snow Carver’s Symposium. The snow…
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None of the Wintergreen guides have TV. Wintergreen Dogsled Lodge doesn’t have TV. None of the Boundary Waters Guide Service guides have TV. So where do you go when you feel compelled to be part of a historic event being broadcast on TV? The local watering hole. The nice folks at the Boathouse Brewpub in…
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After all of the 40 below weather recently, it felt mighty balmy when temps reached into the 20s ABOVE zero today! I stripped down to my T-shirt during the trip this afternoon. We are on a small bay off of White Iron Lake near Ely, MN, in this photo.
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Paper Birch trees are starting to release their winter seeds. The catkin in focus has some of the winged seeds just barely hanging on. These shorter (about 1 1/2 inches) female catkins were pollinated last spring. The seeds have developed over the last seven months. Now they take flight on the wind. We are seeing…
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Tim, from Kentucky, is on a dogsled trip this week. He helped with feeding and caring for the dogs this morning, during the coldest part of the day. It took less than 15 minutes for his eyebrows and eyelashes to freeze up in temps south (not South Beach warm ‘south,’ but lower down on the…
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Started a lodge-based dog sledding trip with four participants today. We launched our teams in temps colder than 25 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. The folks are most surprised that they remained quite comfortable, even in the frigid temps. Chalk that reaction up to quality clothing (they all rented or purchased clothing from the Wintergreen clothing…
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What is the psychological profile of a typical guide? Guides tend to be friendly, outgoing, interesting, and adventurous sorts. After watching Chris’ Greenland dog sledding slideshow, we sat back for pics from another guide’s recent travels with the nomadic people of Mongolia. Our youngest guide, Christina, is a Luther College student who did an independent…
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One of our long-time Wintergreen dogsled guides, Chris Maher, decided to move to where they invented dog sledding: Arctic Greenland. He moved to Greenland in Spring 2008 and purchased a dog team. Now he spends his fall like the native Inuit people he lives with. He drives his team of Inuit dogs hunting seals by…
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