Strong winds left many canoeists windbound over the past few days all over this area of the BWCA. As the winds subsided this morning and paddlers began to make it back to the lodge, many adventurous tales were shared.
It’s our anniversary. The McCloughan family has officially owned Bearskin Lodge for 3 full years; we’re in our 4th summer of resort life. We’re wildly busy at the moment. It appears that 2010 will be the best summer in many years. As always, we are blessed to have fabulous employees who excel at stepping in to do whatever is needed. Someday I will finish the blog I started to write to introduce all our remarkable 2010 employees — here’s hoping I have time to get it done before they all go back to school!
If you check this blog regularly, you are well aware that the Bearskin blog hasn’t been updated nearly as often as it used to be. This is partially because we are so busy, but we also have Facebook to blame. It’s so much easier and faster to spend 5 minutes posting a few short sentences on the Facebook site than to commit to writing a real blog post. Most of our guests who use Facebook have discovered the Bearskin fan page by now, but you don’t need to be a regular Facebook user to access the Bearskin Facebook page. Just bookmark this link, then you can check it out for the most frequent Bearskin updates even if you aren’t the “Facebook type.” I will return to blogging regularly when we have more time but meanwhile, new info appears on our Facebook site almost every day.
You probably know by now that Bearskin is getting back into the canoe outfitting business, after an absence of several decades. Some days we certainly wonder why we keep trying new things. Doing business exactly the same way over and over would surely be easier. But noooo, we have to keep venturing into new territory, complicating our lives with new ideas.
Quinn spent all winter shopping for the best possible gear for Bearskin Wilderness Outfitters. Now all the gear he ordered is arriving and he’s in St. Cloud for 2 months, coaching the St. Cloud Cathedral girls ultimate frisbee team (2nd place last weekend in the Western National High School Championships–they will be formidable in the state tournament, but that’s off topic…) This is a little like letting somebody else unwrap all your Christmas presents while you’re out of town — we get to open all the new boxes of gear, while Quinn only hears about what he received from afar.
Loon photo taken by Bearskin guest John Finnegan, who takes many amazing photos whenever he stays here
No sound characterizes the Bearskin Lodge experience more definitively than the call of a loon. A quote from a blurb for the Duluth Kiwanis Club, which is offering a stay at Bearskin Lodge as an auction item this weekend, illustrates how integral a loon call is to a Bearskin visit. Kiwanis Club member (and Bearskin guest) Grant Nelson wrote this about staying at Bearskin Lodge: (more…)
Visitors and guests at Bearskin frequently ask about the 2007 Ham Lake fire. More and more often now the question goes something like this: “Didn’t you guys have a fire up here quite a few years ago?” It’s surprising how fast the time has passed since that spring of 2007, but on the Gunflint Trail the fire still feels like very recent history.
Bearskin was fortunate to be out of the burn area, but you don’t have to travel very much farther up the trail to begin seeing the blackened remains of a formerly beautiful forest. Because a low green undergrowth has gradually spread across the forest floor, the first sight of the burned areas is not as shocking as it was shortly after the fire. The starkness of blackened trees, rocks, underbrush, and soil is muted by a carpet of green. Still, you don’t have to drive very far through “the burn” before the degree of forest devastation becomes almost overwhelming. Underbrush grows back quickly; 100-year-old trees do not.
The ice-outs of an early spring trigger awe in northern Minnesota (See quote from Bob midway through the article!) http://www.twincities.com/localnews/ci_14825889
Ice off of northeastern Minnesota lakes a week earlier than ever recorded http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/04/05/ice-out/
Well, that was a short-lived “ice out” contest! On Saturday, April 3rd, the ice went out of East Bearskin Lake. Bob watched it go and as always, it was an amazing event to watch. Of course, Bob and Quinn have already paddled all over on the lake.
No snow to measure!
Winter disappeared on the Gunflint Trail rather suddenly. We didn’t expect that.
