3/25/11 – Here is my most recent West End News from WTIP-FM. – Bill

3/23/11 – Whoops, I forgot to post last week’s West End News. I read it live on the air during WTIP’s fund drive, so it might sound a little different. – Bill

3/22/11 – We’ve been riding the weather roller coaster for the last couple of weeks. It varies from warm, melting and raining to cold, freezing and snowing, and back again. As a result, the lakes are getting very good for travel – at least until today when they are too slick to walk or ski and too rough to ice skate. As always, conditions will be changing fast, so we’re keeping close track.
Yesterday, I skied around the Kelso Loop by myself. It was warm, calm and beautiful. I spotted a big otter on Alton Lake, but didn’t get close enough for a picture. – Bill

A ski-eye view of Alton Lake looking south on a warm late afternoon in March.

This is the hole in the snow that the otter I saw disappeared down. It was a well used access to get beneath the lake ice. Otters swim under the ice and breathe from large air pockets that are trapped under the ice. The little dark bits on the left are the pincers from crayfish claws.

This is a pile of otter scat nearby. If you look carefully you can see it is made up mostly of the exoskeletons of crayfish. The red coloring is from the red pigment of the crayfish.

The Alton side of the creek that flows from Alton to Sawbill Lake.

The distinctive rock face and white pine that mark the Alton to Sawbill portage.

3/11/11 – Here is today’s West End News from WTIP-FM, Cook County Community Radio.

3/10/11 – Last weekend, we had a lot of fun. For 30+ years we’ve owned antique, unreliable snowmobiles that we use to groom our little 5K cross country ski trail here at Sawbill. Our most recent snowmobile is actually a relatively late model (~10 years old), low mileage machine that is reliable enough to take for a ride without a high probability of getting stuck or stranded. Our good friends, John and Sue Davies, invited us to join them for trail ride on the excellent snowmobile trails near Lutsen. We had a great time, as it was a beautiful, sunny day and the trails were in perfect shape. The next day, Cindy and I snowshoed up the Onion River from Lake Superior through the intriguing canyons that that river is known for. – Bill

A pause on the trail. Notice the guy on the right wearing his snowboarding helmet and goggles.

Cindy ducks under a white pine windfall that spans the Onion River during our magical snowshoe outing during a twilight snow fall.

The frozen waterfalls have created ice palaces in the canyons.

Cindy navigates a tight corner.

Beauty in beauty.

3/6/11 – This week’s broadcast and text of the Cook County “West End News” on WTIP-FM.

3/2/11 – Here is something you don’t hear every day. The Forest Service has just lowered the non-refundable BWCA Wilderness entry permit reservation fee from $12/permit to $6/permit. We had no idea this was coming and heard about by reading the blog of the Duluth News Tribune outdoor writer, Sam Cook. Apparently, the contractor who handles the permit system for the Forest Service, the National Recreation Reservation Service, has a lot less work to do now that the vast majority of permits are made online.
It is very strange timing to make this change two months into the reservation season when outfitters and Forest Service offices have already published the now incorrect $12 price for this season. The people who reserved their permits already this year are apparently stuck paying the higher fee, which doesn’t really seem fair either.
Just to add to the confusion, the toll free phone number to reserve permits has changed too. If you want to reserve your permit by phone you should now call 1-877-444-6777. Also, the permit reservation web site has been acting strangely for the last week or so, but it seems to be working OK now.
As always, we are happy to reserve a permit for you, so you don’t have to deal with the sometimes erratic reservation office. Just give us a call (218-663-7150) or send an email and we’ll take it from there.
By the way, there are still permits available for every day of the season at all the entry points around Sawbill, so pick your entry day and start planning your next wilderness canoe trip! – Bill

2/27/11 – It’s Clare Hansen’s birthday today. She lived at Sawbill full time for the first 18 years of her life and now makes her home in Missoula, Montana. She’s been accepted to the University of Montana Law School and will likely be there for the next three years. She has agreed to come back to Sawbill to work for a few weeks during the busy season this summer and are we glad to have her coming back! Happy birthday Clare!
Former Sawbill crew member Alison Bents (Behm) just auditioned to be the new cello player for the nationally known band with Minnesota roots, Cloud Cult. Alison is a fabulous musician and would be a great addition to the band that lives, breathes and sings the values of sustainability and tolerance. Good luck Alison!
Our fabulous local community radio station, WTIP, has asked me to take over my dad Frank’s weekly commentary, The West End News. Frank wrote a column with the same title for our local weekly paper, The Cook County News-Herald, for many years. When the paper changed hands a few years ago, they dropped all the local columnists who were picked up by WTIP. In the last years of Frank’s life, one of his favorite activities was going down to the radio station to record his commentary. He also volunteered at the station and really enjoyed all the fine people there. The staff tells me that Frank’s commentary gathered the most hits on their website. I am honored to be asked to continue the tradition and only hope that I can half as well as Frank did. You can read or listen to my initial efforts on the WTIP website.
By the way, WTIP provides some amazingly good programming. You can stream it to your computer anytime. There are many good programs, but I particularly recommend “Sidetracks” hosted by Cathy Quinn on weekdays from 10 am – noon. In my opinion, Cathy has fantastic taste in music. – Bill

2/12/11 – It’s raining bobcats! After our bobcat adventure last week, which culminated in our live trapping a bobcat that was living under our deck and posting the nerve wracking release on YouTube (scroll down if you want to view it), we got a lot of feedback, including postings on two popular blogs and Facebook. A couple of days later, our next door neighbors, who live 12 miles away, visited for some tea and skiing. As we were chatting at the dining room table, we glanced outside and were surprised to see a bobcat sitting on the ski trail about 100 feet from the house. With careful binocular examination, we determined that this was a different bobcat than the one we had previously released.

A non-telephoto shot of the cat. Different coloring and larger ears convinced us that this is a different bobcat.
Our neighbors shared that they also have a bobcat visiting their house and they’d heard about another home that had a bobcat under their deck. Also, after they left, they called to say that they saw a bobcat on the Sawbill Trail a few miles south of here. Since then, we’ve heard about yet another “bird feeder” bobcat in the county, so it seems as though the stress on the cats must be fairly universal and they are showing up everywhere.
Our latest visitor hasn’t holed up under the deck like the last one did. The dogs spotted it the next morning, but it just ran away instead of trying to hide. Last night, our terrier Phoebe, Chief of Outfitter Security, started barking wildly from her window perch. I went outside and found large bobcat tracks in the fresh snow right in front of the window.
We’ve decided not to trap this bobcat, as long as it doesn’t try to live under the deck. Hopefully, the coming warm weather will cause the snow to crust over enough so the bobcats can return to their normal haunts. – bill

2/10/11 – Hans Neve, longtime Sawbill camper, was kind enough to send these pictures of his son Grant during their recent winter camping trip on Sawbill Lake. – Bill