4/11/08 – OK, this is getting ridiculous. We awoke this morning to another late season winter storm. 7.5 inches of snow overnight and more since I measured this morning. High winds are adding to the mid-winter feel today.
We are starting to get calls and emails about when the ice will go out. The earliest ice-out date that I can remember in the last fifty years was in 2000 when Sawbill was ice free on April 12th. Since the millennium, the ice has gone out sometime in April every year except two. Once it went out on May 1st and once on May 2nd. The latest ice out in my memory was May 24th. I can’t remember the year, but it was at least twenty years ago.
Predicting ice out dates is dicey at best. I’ve seen thin, rotten, black ice hang in for weeks during a late season cold snap and I’ve seen a solid 14 inches of ice go out in a couple of days. Within the next few days we’ll start a daily report on ice thickness and condition. I’m still hoping for at least a few good days of lake skiing and kite flying. – Bill

Plowing on April 11th!

4/6/08 – While most of the country is sliding gently into spring, Sawbill is still firmly entrenched in the winter season. While it’s true that we’ve had some significant melting recently, we awoke this morning to 6″ of fresh snow and more on the way!

Phoebe and Roy checking the new snow for tracks while on hourly security patrol.

April snows belie the impending canoe season.

3/27/08 –

Yesterday, our neighbor up on the Gunflint Trail, Hungry Jack Lodge, had a catastrophic fire. Despite the best efforts of the outstanding Gunflint Trail Fire Department, the main lodge building was a total loss. This is the third time the lodge building has burned, first in 1931, then again in 1972, and now 2008.
Hungry Jack Lodge has a rich history in the area and a direct connection to Sawbill Lodge, our former next door neighbor who went out of business in the ’80s. After the 1931 Hungry Jack fire, a teenager from Chicago, Wilson “Nibs” Arbogust, was hired by the owners to help clean up and reconstruct the lodge building. Although he didn’t actually do any of the log work, Nibs studied the techniques and practiced on his own. On a visit home in January of 1932, Nibs raised the idea with his father, step-mother and siblings that they should start a wilderness lodge in the style of Hungry Jack.
To make a long story short, they did carve Sawbill Lodge out of the wilderness with many, many great stories created and it eventually became one of the premiere resorts in Minnesota. Sawbill Lodge opted to go out of business when the BWCA Wilderness Act was passed in 1978. The Forest Service paid them for the property and returned it to nature. The Sawbill Lodge building was moved to Solbakken Resort in Lutsen where it can be visited today.
Our sympathy and best wishes go out to Forest Parson and his staff for their loss. – Bill

3/20/08 – In our continuing coverage of cute kids born to former Sawbill crew members, today’s feature is Natasha Warner (aka Tasha B A), her husband, Ray White, and daughters Willow (3) and Olive (1). Natasha settled in the nearby town of Grand Marais after working at Sawbill. –

Ray, Natasha, and future canoeists Willow and Olive relaxing at home.

3/17/08 – Winter continues here at Sawbill with deep snow, cold nights and frosty mornings. It’s hard to imagine that summer is coming with it’s deep green foliage and water warm enough to swim. Now is a good time to be planning your wilderness canoe trips and think about reserving an entry permit. Almost all entry dates are still open for the season, so you can choose your favorite route. You can check permit availability (and make a reservation) by following the links below.
Sawbill Lake #38
Kawishiwi Lake #37
Hog Creek #36
Baker Lake #39
Homer Lake #40
Brule Lake #41
Brule Lake Only #41A
All other entry points

Temperatures swing widely at this time of year. When the conditions are right, every twig and branch is coated with a rime of frost.

Sawbill Lake looks frosty and cold, but soon will start it’s transition to blue and liquid.

Phoebe, Chief of Outfitter Security, (left) with her deputies, Homer and Roy, on lake patrol.

3/6/08 – This is a little bit off subject, but the local Grand Marais Jazz Festival is shaping up to be a very interesting and enjoyable event this year. There will be great jazz performances scattered around the area on the weekend of the fishing opener. Fishing during the day and listening to live jazz at night – sounds good to me! – Bill

3/3/08 – We experienced a natural phenomenon yesterday that is unique to our 51 years at Sawbill. From late afternoon through the night, the trees were making strange popping noises. It was a spooky, hard to describe sound that sounded like people tapping on tree trunks with resonant sticks. With some quite close and the rest fading into the distance, the sound was nearly continuous. The air was perfectly still and combined with a star filled sky, it gave one a profound sense of the forest as a living organism.
My best guess is that some sap started to flow during the last couple of warm days. Last night the temperature quickly dropped to about ten below, causing the trees to refreeze and make the popping sound. On the mysterious side, we’ve seen sudden temperature drops many times in March and have never heard this before. Also, it was a much quieter, mellow sound than the cracking that trees do during extreme cold snaps in December and January. – Bill

2/26/08 – Lots of Sawbill news to catch up with. We enjoyed big group of visitors over the President’s Day weekend. The Sawbill Babes, an informal gathering of former and current crew members, held their annual skiing, wine drinking and laughing festival.

(l-r front row)Annie, Patti, Michele, Sandy, Phoebe (what a dog!), Cindy (l-r back row) Jessa, Caitlin, Clare, Lida, Beth.
Aside the Babes, we had visits from a number of other former and current crew, of both the male and female persuasion. Many are snowboarders and a couple of downhill skiers, so we enjoyed a big day at the Lutsen Mountains ski area.

Clare and Lida reflected in Cindy’s goggles while riding the gondola at Lutsen Mountains.
Cindy’s appearance on the popular public radio show “Car Talk” didn’t happen. In Minnesota, the big public radio network was pledging, so they substituted some “Best of Car Talk” recordings instead of the regularly scheduled show. In the rest of the country, the episode aired, but we were disappointed that they didn’t use Cindy’s segment. They may use it in future shows, so keep your fingers crossed.
Sawbill native, Clare Hansen, has decamped to Vina Del Mar, Chile, for the next five months. She is attending school there toward her anthropology degree and cementing her fluency in spanish. Her blog is www.clarehansen.blogspot.com/.

2/13/08 – Sawbill’s own Cindy Hansen is going to be on the popular public radio program “Car Talk” hosted by the famous Tappet Brothers, Click and Clack. After a couple of tries at being a guest on her favorite show, she was called back by Louie Cronin The Barbarian (who turns out to be a woman). She had to make it through a couple of screenings until they called today during the weekly taping of the show. She’ll be on the show that airs in approximately ten days (around the 23rd, depending on your local schedule) right after the Puzzler at the beginning of the third half of the show. – Bill

Cindy is holding the “Second Best of Car Talk” CD that she’s been studying in preparation for her moment of fame on an upcoming episode. Roy is very impressed to have such an illustrious owner!

Her question for the automotive experts stems from a spousal disagreement concerning the proper operation of this snow plow. She isn’t telling anyone exactly what the question was, or what wisdom the Tappet Brothers dispensed, saying: “You’ll just have to listen to the show.”

2/6/08 – Today is Frank Hansen’s 87th birthday. Happy birthday Frank! His email address is mah@boreal.org if you’d like to send him a greeting.
Shawn Peyton sent the following email and photo this morning:
Greetings Bill and crew,
Was just feeling the winter blues for paddling and reminiscing about last year’s trip, looking through the photographs. We came up in May and put in a day before they closed all the entry points due to the Ham Lake fire. Long story short it was quite an experience seeing that on the horizon for most of the trip. We came up with the plan on going up through the fire lakes, Kelly etc. and then into Brule. Then turning north up to Winchell then back east to the Frost River, south to the Louse River valley then back through Polly, Phoebe route to return to Sawbill. Needless to say we were turned back at the north portage out of Brule by a spray plane diving down over the treeline right above our heads. Perhaps not too bright to get any closer. We reversed directions going up through Cherokee to catch Frost lake and then back on the route planned. I’ll say in all the twelve years I’ve been coming up through Sawbill we’ve never had Cherokee Lake all to ourselves in May. I wish a forest fire hadn’t been the circumstances for that luxury. lol
Anyway, I’m passing along a photo I took on a quiet day on Mesaba Lake as we were looking for a campsite. My two compadres were in a tandem while I was paddling solo and on opposite sides of the point as we debarked to check out this particular site. Deciding against it, I returned to my boat to check out the one across the way. I heard some shouts and as I came around saw something that about made me fall out of my boat laughing. There was Jim and Meg standing on shore and their Prospector paddling off by itself. I paddled over to help out but not before, of course, a couple of photos were taken. Both Jim and Meg have worked in the outdoor industry for years, both have been instructors for Rutabaga’s (Madison) outdoor program, and are amazing paddlers. So it just made it all the funnier. If the photo made it onto your online newsletter it would be wonderful to embarrass them on a public forum in the name of good fun (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). Even experts are prone to those DOH! moments.
I was just having happy memories of the usual good time had every year as we launch out of Sawbill. I had actually just come from a week of backpacking on the Superior Hiking Trail and I really appreciate Kari letting me use the shower before they had been cleaned for the season. I’m sure Jim and Meg when they met up with me appreciated it as well. Hope ya’ll are having a great winter with all the abundant snowfall. Take care.
Shawn