Skiing, cross-country
From yurt to B&B on the Gunflint Trail
In a snowy Minnesota wilderness, guests get the best of two worlds.
When it’s 30 below in the north woods, that's nothing like a cold day in Siberia.
It’s more like a cold day in Mongolia.
Temperatures were dangerously low over New Year's when we drove with friends to the Gunflint Trail, but we knew a wood fire would be waiting for us in a round, canvas-sided hut called a yurt, or ger in Mongolia.
Skiing the North Shore
On snow-laden trails, cross-country skiers glide on cloud nine.
On the North Shore, it’s a happy day when snow is as abundant as scenery.
Despite its miles of cross-country ski trails, the western shore of Lake Superior gets only modest amounts of lake-effect snow, because the storms that do blow in from the east tend to dump it inland, where the land mass is colder.
But we go, even if we have to hike instead of ski. We love to be on the North Shore, near moody Lake Superior and its
dramatic, ice-draped river gorges.
Ski out the door
From cozy north-woods lodges, guests glide into a world of white.
In a blizzard, nothing is better than holing up with an expert cook, a bottomless cookie jar, a steam room, a big hot tub and one of the best ski-trail groomers in the Midwest.
One January, the stars aligned in the heavens and I found myself in the best possible place to be during a blizzard: Maplelag.
This ski resort in northwest Minnesota is renowned for many things — all-you-can-eat meals, personable owners, hundreds of stained-glass windows and signs from defunct train depots — but it’s most famous for its ability to conjure a bit of snow into world-class ski tracks when the rest of Minnesota is bare.
Cross-country in Duluth
When snow falls, skiers fly onto a splendid system of groomed trails.
One March, I went up to Duluth but woke up in Siberia.
Twenty inches of snow had fallen overnight. A savage 70 mph wind was howling around the glass-walled lobby of the Willard Munger Inn. Swirling snow had turned the air white.
But then my niece and I noticed cars crawling along Grand Avenue. Then more cars. So we bundled up and got in our car, and to
our surprise, made it all the way across town to Lester Park.
Ski or snowshoe by candlelight
On a cold winter's night, follow the twinkling lights.
If you do only one thing outdoors in winter, do it by candlelight.
Nothing is more magical than a forest full of flickering lights. I got hooked when I skied in Minnesota's Mille Lacs Kathio
State Park.
A fat blue moon hung in the sky, sparkling hoarfrost made twigs as nubby as reindeer antlers and more than 400 glowing bags gave the forest a fairy-tale aura.
Bayfield in winter
When snow covers this scenic Wisconsin peninsula, everyone heads for the hills.
In the vacation town of Bayfield, action shifts to the woods in winter.
In summer, everyone gravitates to Lake Superior and its cruise launches, sailboats, ferries and kayaks. But when it snows, the locomotion is on inland trails.
And it does snow. Gales over the big lake deliver plenty for skiers, snowmobilers and mushers.
Ironwood the reliable
When most of the Upper Midwest is brown, cross-country skiers know where to find snow.
In Ironwood, there’s one thing people can count on besides death and taxes.
Snow, and lots of it, is a sure thing in this former ore-mining town just over the Wisconsin-Michigan border. Blown in over Lake Superior, the snow starts falling as soon as days cool down in late autumn and keeps falling until spring sun turns the pink-tinted piles into slush.
Its sheer quantity often exasperates locals, but it exhilarates the cross-country skiers who converge on the town like sheep to salt, desperate to hear the crunch of newfallen snow and cast their eyes over a world of white.
Winter in Washburn
Ski across Chequamegon Bay by candlelight and see the ice caves, too.
In summer, the Bayfield Peninsula, on the northern tip of Wisconsin, is a playground of sand, water and woods, beloved by tourists.
In winter, the playground expands.
Lake Superior freezes and people come to play, walking to the mainland ice caves near Cornucopia and skiing across Chequamegon Bay by candlelight.
Minocqua's white magic
In northeast Wisconsin, snowy forests delight skiers and snowmobilers.
In northeast Wisconsin, winter can be almost shamelessly beautiful.
Not only is the snow plentiful, it’s that photogenic, see-me-sparkle kind of snow that looks so good draped on pine
boughs.
Skiing the Escanaba Lake Trail near Minocqua one February, exchanging hellos with passing skiers, all of them smiling, I had the feeling I must be in a magazine shoot.
Telemark's third act
In northwest Wisconsin, a fabled ski resort claws its way back.
What becomes a legend most? In the case of Telemark Resort in northwest Wisconsin, solvency.
The once-busy ski lodge closed in 1998, reopened in 1999, closed again in 2010 and reopened in January 2011.
The lodge, which polite guests call "a diamond in the rough,'' desperately needs updating. But guests willing to put up with the 1970s decor and rusty service were rewarded with room rates that start at $49.
Winter in Eagle River
Around this snowy Wisconsin town, there's a trail for everyone.
To the uninitiated, the vast expanses of forest around Eagle River, Wis., look like a lot of nothing.
It's rocky, useless land, forfeited to the government during the Depression, and hardly anyone lives there — Eagle River, pop. 1,400, is Vilas County's only city.
This empty forest, however, draws thousands, and on winter weekends, it's not so empty. Snowmobilers, skiers and snowshoers
come to these woods — to the east and north lie the 657,000 square acres of Nicolet National Forest, and to
the west, the 220,00 acres of Northern Highland-American Legion State Forest.
Winter on Minnesota's Gunflint Trail
On the edge of the Boundary Waters, Nordic skiers find snow that sparkles into April.
While people in cities to the south are looking for crocuses, folks on northeast Minnesota's Gunflint Trail are enjoying some of the best skiing of the year.
It's not that the Gunflint is so much colder. It's that there's so much snow it keeps itself refrigerated, like glaciers.
"We have a really good base,'' says Heather Telchow of Golden Eagle Lodge. "Even after these warm days, the snow is like brand new. I grew up in Faribault, and I'm used to it disappearing in a few days. But we don't lose snow like that up here. We keep it forever.''
Winter in Wausau
There's skiing, dining and sightseeing right in this modest paper town.
The first time I saw Rib Mountain it was nighttime, and I was driving toward Wausau from the north.
Looming over the Wisconsin town was a massive hulk lined with white lights, rising from the surrounding plain like a landing strip set on edge. It was a spectacular sight — and still is, day or night.
This billion-year-old quartzite ridge, one of the oldest on Earth, was thought to be the highest point in Wisconsin until
Timm's Hill, near Ogema, was surveyed at 12 feet higher.
Winona with snow
Snowstorms that blanket the southern woods bring skiers with them.
Skiers have a hard time figuring out Mother Nature.
It's supposed to snow across central and northern Minnesota and Wisconson, but in the last few years, many storms have veered to the south instead. It's odd, but what can you do? You have to go with the snow.
One year, at the end of February, my friend Becky and I were just about to make the long drive to the snowy Upper Peninsula of Michigan when the southeast Minnesota town of Winona got blanketed with 30 inches.
Gliding in the pines
In the hills above Minnesota's North Shore, skiers flock to an old-time lodge.
When snow is sparse on Minnesota's North Shore — and even when it isn't — skiers head for the hills.
Over the Sawtooth Mountains and deep into Superior National Forest, the Flathorn-Gegoka trails gather up the snow, arrange it prettily atop boughs and wait for cross-country skiers to come ooh and aah.
The perpetually snow-flocked pines never fail to amaze people who come to stay and ski at the National Forest Lodge.
Itasca in winter
From a cozy hostel, guests ski out the door onto park trails.
In winter, only the most dedicated pilgrims make the trip to Itasca, Minnesota's most revered state park.
Yet the park is beautiful without its forest canopy. It's easy to see its bones, the lumpy quilt of knobs and kettles laid
down by retreating glaciers.
It's easy to see the 300-year-old pines that escaped loggers. And it's easier to listen — to the sassy chatter of a squirrel, the prehistoric croak of a crow, the rat-a-tat of a woodpecker.
Snow asylum
In northeast Wisconsin, Afterglow Resort stays on top of the heap.
In the wilds of northeast Wisconsin, winter always looks like winter.
It's the kind with snow — snow that comes early, stays late and blankets the forest in heaps, supplying reliable skiing and snowshoeing to people from less-blessed locales.
But in 2003, the heaps of snow didn't come there or virtually anywhere, and skiers were desperate. So was Pete Moline, who
runs Afterglow Resort on a lake near the Michigan border.
Happy days at Maplelag
Winter is as good as it gets at a friendly cross-country ski resort in northwest Minnesota.
It was an early January day in western Minnesota. A biting wind was blowing off the prairie, and the mercury was sinking faster than the Titanic.
But it didn’t matter. I was at Maplelag, where the world is my iceberg . . . um, oyster.
At Maplelag, no matter how inhospitable the outside world is, the lodge’s stained-glass windows turn the wan rays of winter into gleaming golds and apricots. The steam billowing from the giant hot tub creates a dome of warmth amid the tundra. Bottomless cookie jars and baskets of hot fry bread keep guests fat and happy.
A Giant advantage
For novice nordic skiers, this Iron Range resort rolls out the red carpet.
For cross-country skiers, Giants Ridge has it all: Plentiful snow. Scenery. Sixty kilometers of groomed trails.
Best of all, it has chairlifts.
Alpine skiers aren’t the only ones who think downhills are more fun than uphills. Nordic skiers also like to put gravity on their side, especially those who are trying to learn how to skate.
© Beth Gauper, 2007 - 2013 all rights reserved
