The past week ended up being quite an array of winter activities! Last Sunday started off with a North Country Trail snowshoe to Tibbets Falls on the Sturgeon River to the north of Watton. Although it was only 12 degrees, the bright sunshine made for a very pleasurable adventure through the woods!
This hike added another 3.8 miles toward this year’s North Country Trail #hike100NCT challenge bringing our year-to-date total to 6.4 miles. If you would like to see more photos from this hike, check out my Instagram at @Decompressu!
The break from new snow continued into Monday. I had been watching the snow steadily accumulating on our cabin (which we list on Airbnb from late April into November) and decided it was time to get out there to do some roof raking!
Looking at the size of this pile, it will likely be a close call on whether or not this will be melted away by the time our first guests come in for MTU graduation!
Tuesday afternoon found me doing a solo ski on the MTU trails by way of the Nara Nature Park Trailhead. This is among my favorite skis because of the significant amount of climbing required along the way. I covered 10.77 miles with an elevation gain of 975 feet. I started down low by skiing the Ridge Loop over to the Homestead Loop. The latter has a nice speedy downhill that takes you down to the Pilgrim River.
Judging by the tracks on the snow, it appeared that only a couple of other skiers had been down there so far that day. On my climb back up from the river, I had three whitetail deer cross in front of me.
The third deer stood its ground seemingly out of curiosity. I was able to get rather close to it before it trotted off into the woods. I ran into my friends Duane and Marsha while skiing the Isle Royale Loop and then ran into my friend Dave a couple of times on both the Isle Royale and Portage Loops. Below is what Strava captured on my ski.
With the snow falling again on Wednesday, it turned into a good day for summarizing information and pulling together tax documents for the accountant. By evening, I was ready to get out for a run with the Keweenaw Running Group! Although the temperature had risen into the 20s, we had a pretty good breeze to contend with as we headed back to the SDC up Cemetery Road!
Thursday saw important progress on the garage project with the subcontractor from UPPCO getting out to trench and put in the new electrical service line from the road to the meter socket. I was hoping the cable/broadband line was going to be able to piggyback on this trenching, but unfortunately that will have to wait until spring. Phil made good progress with the insulation this week and the drywall will be soon to follow.
Julie and I met up with a group of friends on Thursday afternoon from Baraga County whom we guided on a snowshoe of the Red, Orange, and Blue Chassell Trails. We went in from the Archambeau Road Trailhead and headed in on the Red Trail since most of them had never seen Hamar Creek Falls.
Friday started with an amazing sunrise which during the winter is a pretty darn good indicator that snow is on the way!
Sure enough, by afternoon we had a snow globe on our hands that kept us close to home until I dug us out on Saturday morning!
Saturday afternoon was the annual Keweenaw Nordic Ski Club Retro Ski at Maasto Hiihto and Churning Rapids on the north side of Hancock. This fun event is a backcountry ski where participants are encouraged to bring out their old equipment and fashions. I don my Finnish reindeer hat and pull out my ancient bamboo poles. The Retro Ski always seems to draw in people we have not met before and this year was not an exception. We met John who came to the area from Yellowstone National Park to work at Isle Royale and remote workers Mary and John who came to Calumet from Kalamazoo. We met up at the Tomasi Trailhead and skied into the Swedetown Creek Gorge by way of the Tomasi and Pine Loops.
After crossing the Pedestrian Bridge over Swedetown Creek, we found ourselves skiing through deep powder as we made our way downstream.
You can check out my GoPro video of the portion of the Retro Ski up to Mud Lake on the Remote Workforce Keweenaw YouTube channel at this link:
Do you embrace winter and have the ability to work remotely? Would you value living in a place with ubiquitous natural beauty that has NO congestion? Consider locating in the Keweenaw where you will be surrounded by amazing places! Learn about those who have made the decision to locate here by following the Remote Workforce Keweenaw Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/RemoteWorkforceKeweenaw and learn more about Remote Workforce Keweenaw at https://remoteworkforcekeweenaw.com
Take out a free subscription to the Remote Workforce Keweenaw Newsletter to get a feel for day-to-day life here in the Keweenaw! The week ahead should be particularly interesting as we have considerable snow in the forecast for Monday and Tuesday!