While the colder temps have helped build the ice on the later freezing lakes, one should always be wary of changing conditions. Especially on larger lakes like Gunflint and Seagull and Saganaga – pressure ridges can form at any time. More likely to occurr when there are extreme changes in the temperature, cracks in the ice can occur at any time opening up and allowing water to flood an area. The two opposing ice sheets may also force together and much like plate tectonics, layer over on another leaving great ice ridges across open expanses or along shorelines. These can form over a couple days or hours. What might not have been there during your daylight ride to a destination, may suddenly “pop-up” or crack open, changing your evening twilight or moonlit return trip dramatically!

Always use caution and common sense. – Safe Travels.

There’s a pack or two of wolves on the lake this monring. It started with 4 or so out front of the pines. Then a couple went on a scouting trip across the lake to the Canadian side. Another went west to the point between Gunflint Lodge and Cross River Lodge, and came back with 3 more. Wow what a great sight to behold. – bet you wish you were in an A-frame watching the fun.

  This past weekend I heard reports from Moss, Birch, Portage, Mayhew all have excellent ict 12 – 16 inches  with little snow and little to no slush and excellent fishing for rainbow, Laketrout and Splake.   Mavis Lake produced some nice brookies and had around 12 inches with a little more slush

I have heard that there were fishermen on the eastern side of Gunflint near the palisades, and that the ice is 8-12 inches around there.  Unfortunately the Westerly side of Gunflint did not see any fishing activity as the ice is less secure.   A recent ice check  (two days ago) out front of Gunflint Lodge reported the following: 

25 ft out  – 12 inches of ice 4 of that was white (bad) ice; 

100ft out – 6 inches of ice 3-4 of that was white ice,

250 yards out 4 inches of ice 2 of that was white ice.  

They also reported an open hole just off shore near where the creek feeds into the lake from the Gunflint Lodge property.    We are heading into colder weather for a couple days so we believe by next weekend the ice should be pretty good.  The temps for next weekend look favorable too with the day time temps in the 20s. 

Remember to always use caution and common sense if you venture out!    Happy Fishing.

Our phones have been out since mid afternoon today (Tuesday) so if you’ve been trying to call and only getting a busy signal – our apologies. They should be here to fix it tomorrow! Hopefully we’ll be fully online again Thursday as we’ve been having some computer software issues too and will be working on that tomorrow too.

Thanks for your patience. – Shari

The calls seem to be coming in more quickly regarding ice, snow, ski and snowmbile trail conditions. Here’s what I think I know:

We had a bit of warming yesterday, but not so much that we lost any great amounts of snow. It was just a nice sunny winter day. We still have about 12 – 14 inches in the woods, and got 1.5 fresh inches of snow overnight and it’s still snowing lightly. Most of the ski trails are all packed and tracked with a single track and a single skate lane. South Rim is groomed, and skiable, but not in it’s best condition yet.  Amperage has been broken open, but we do not feel it is skiable yet. Magnetic is still closed.  We have been doing additional work to clear trail and side brush from many of the ski trails (so if you see a snowmobile track on the skate lane – don’t panic yet).

The snowmobile groomer has been as far as Gunflint Lake, and the snowmobile trail has an estimated packed base of 4-6 inches.  Many of the smaller lakes have been frozen over for quite awhile and are safe for travel.  Gunflint Lake froze over late this season, on Dec 17th and we recently walked out about 60 yards in front of the resort to find 6 inches of ice.  We still feel that the lake is not yet completely safe for travel though.  

We’re still a winter wonderland much more so than the rest of MN apparently – so if you’re looking for snow – we’re here!

Shari