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Our summer crew members are starting to arrive.

5/13/08 – Our summer crew members are starting to arrive. – Bill
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Matt Hartmann is returning for his third year at Sawbill. He’s been accepted at Creighton Medical School in Omaha, but plans to defer for a year to travel in New Zealand.
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Sam Reynolds is a brand new crew member from Durham, North Carolina. He is a junior at North Carolina State.
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Carl Hansen returns for his 18th year at Sawbill. He is the youngest of the third generation of Hansens living at Sawbill. He is graduating from Cook County High School this year, but also has completed his freshman year at the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth under Minnesota’s excellent Post Secondary Enrollment Option program. He is attending the University of Montana next year.

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5/12/08

5/12/08 3:30 PM – OK, this is beyond ridiculous. – Bill
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This afternoon we got an unwelcome surprise.
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The view toward the lake. If you look carefully, you can see a group packing up to go home at the landing. They were actually due to come out today and were OK with the snow, even though one of them was from Las Vegas.
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Homer followed me outside when I snapped the snow pictures. He was out for less than a minute.

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We have first hand reports now that all the lakes

5/12/08 – We have first hand reports now that all the lakes around Sawbill are ice free except Brule and Winchell. Based on a report yesterday from a wilderness ranger, it sounds like Brule will go out today.
Fishing reports for the opener were pretty good. Everyone caught fish. A group staying here at the Sawbill Lake campground before leaving on a canoe trip this morning caught several walleyes and a large bass right from the canoe landing.
Ed Dallas, Sawbill’s poet laureate, had heart bypass surgery six months ago, putting him on the sidelines for awhile. He is feeling well enough now to start composing his unique haikus again. Here are a couple of samples:
fishing opener
beside the trout lily
an empty creel
levee break –
Bad River’s harmonica
moans the blues

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Sawbill Outfitters is recommended in the June issue of Outside magazine!

5/10/08 – Sawbill Outfitters is recommended in the June issue of Outside magazine! We haven’t seen it yet, but people tell us that we’re mentioned favorably on page 42.
Today is the opening day of fishing season. No reports yet. Due to the late spring, it is a quiet opener, with just a handful of hardy canoeists venturing out. It appears that all the lakes around here are ice free except Brule and Winchell. They should be ice free by the end of today or tomorrow at the latest.
Aaron Browning stopped by today on his way out on a week long canoe trip. Aaron makes fine laminated wooden paddles for sale. You can see his handiwork at his website: Boundary Canoe Paddles. – Bill
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Sorry for the lousy picture. Our trusty digital camera has been screwing up about 80% of the pictures we’ve been taking and the new camera arrived just after this was taken.

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/9/08 – We marked the end of an era here at Sawbill when

5/9/08 – We marked the end of an era here at Sawbill when three big norway (red) pines that have been standing sentinel to our canoe yard came down. One of them was sort of “in” the driveway and had been hit by cars so many times over the years that it was entirely girdled around it’s base. The pine next to it was attacked by a pileated woodpecker this spring (see 4/20/08 entry below). The woodpecker removed so much wood that we were afraid the towering pine would snap off in the next wind storm, crushing a building, vehicle, pile of Kevlar canoes, or all of the above. As we contemplated cutting down these two damaged trees, we discovered serious rot in the base of third nearby red pine.
All the large pines on our property are roughly the same age. They sprouted following a huge fire in the 1890s that extended from 12 miles south of Sawbill all the way up into Canada. Fire ecologist Bud Heinselman estimated the size of that fire at nearly 3 million acres!
We were very sad to see the trees go, but every living thing reaches an end sometime. Sawmills won’t take logs that have been in a developed area for fear of ruining there saw blades on imbedded nails, so we will burn the trees in our boilers. – Bill
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The canoe yard just before the three trees came down.
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Two down and the third is just beginning to fall.

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Here is the latest lake ice information from the Forest Service pilot:

5/8/08 – Here is the latest lake ice information from the Forest Service pilot:
ICE STATUS as of 1530, Thursday, May 8, 2008
ICE FREE:
Alpine
Banadad
Brant
Crocodile
Cross River to Long Island
Iron
Jap
Little Saganaga
Missing Link
Moon
Ogishkemuncie
Portage
Round
Sawbill
Tucker
Two Island
SOME ICE REMAINING
Alton
Cherokee
East Bearskin
Flour
Frost
Hungry Jack
Kimball
Little Trout
Meeds
Mink
Seagull (especially on western end)
Swan
FROZEN
Bearskin
Birch
Brule
Clearwater
Davis
Duncan
Elbow
Gabimichigami
Gaskin
Gillis
Greenwood
Kemo
Loon
Mayhew
McFarland
Musquash/Misquah
North Fowl
Pine
Poplar
Rose
Saganaga (quite frozen, according to the pilot)
South Fowl
Trout (east of Kimball Lake Campground)
Tuscarora
Winchell
The pilot feels that things will change quickly with the exception of the
eastern side of the Gunflint Trail (Clearwater, Greenwood, Duncan, Pine,
etc).
Judith A. MacCudden
Information Assistant
Gunflint Ranger District
Phone: (218) 387-3200
Fax: (218) 387-3246
email: jmaccudden@fs.fed.us

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The ice is out on Sawbill Lake! The official date is May 6th

5/7/08 – The ice is out on Sawbill Lake! The official date is May 6th as the lake was essentially ice free by sunset last night. I will try to get out for a paddle this evening to check out Alton Lake. Usually, Alton, Cherokee and some of the larger lakes keep their ice for a few days after Sawbill goes out. – Bill
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A small amount of residual ice is blown in by a stiff north wind. Most of Sawbill Lake is ice free.
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Extremely high water brought this unexpected driftwood visitor to the canoe landing. Once the ice melts, it should migrate down to the mouth of Sawbill Creek.

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There has been good progress in ice melting

5/6/08 – There has been good progress in ice melting over the last two days. The ice is now too degraded to even bother drilling a hole. It should go out on Sawbill today or tomorrow at the latest. Roy Wonder, our clueless Deputy of Outfitter Security, decided that the skim ice near the shore was plenty strong enough to hold a terrier. He piled in head first and took an impressively deep dive through the thin ice. He climbed out by himself and acted like it never happened. – Bill
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Black ice on Sawbill. Today is warm and windy with thundershowers coming later in the day. This may be the end of the ice!

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After another chilly night last night, the lake ice

5/4/08 – After another chilly night last night, the lake ice measured 9 inches thick this morning. The sun is shining brightly and some of the smaller lakes are starting to look quite dark.
I went up to the end of the Gunflint Trail last night to play for a dance with my band, The Splinters. It was a celebration of the Gunflint Green-up, a community effort to recover both physically and psychically from last year’s gigantic Ham Lake forest fire. Four hundred volunteers planted more than 50,000 white pine and red pine seedlings. The weekend included a dinner, dance and the Ham Lake half marathon that traces the route of the fire for 13.1 miles along the Gunflint Trail. It was great to see a community celebrating their resiliency after a devastating disaster. It was also impressive that they had the energy to dance after planting trees all day. – Bill
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I am warily drilling the daily test hole (notice my one foot in the canoe). It turned out to be plenty strong enough to stand on (9″), but I didn’t want a chilly surprise!
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The official measurement.
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Open water around the island.
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Phoebe worries about the two humans that are literally walking on the thin ice.