Photographs by Joe Crain and Andy Mack
Photos by Andy Mack and Joe Crain
Photos by Andy Mack and Joe Crain
Photos by Andy Mack, Joe Crain, and Amy Mack
By Joe Crain
It’s the last day of May and the pre-camp crew has been hard at work for the past week. Pre-camp is hard work but a lot of fun for those who choose to participate. We have several international staff in the crew this year, a group of pre-shakedown-trip wilderness tripping staff, and even a few guys that have made pre-camp a way to stay connected to the place. Even though they can’t stay for the season and must get back to their chosen professions, they take a working vacation that allows them to reconnect with their Nebagamon roots.
May has been a very busy month around camp – we’ve had a number of external work forces doing some big jobs around the property. A big roofing outfit was in last week and tore off the old and put new shingles on camp’s largest roof, the Rec Hall. A small local two-man roofing crew removed and replaced the worn out shingles of Swamper 1 and 2, and Logger 5. An asphalt company came and laid the asphalt for camps new Pickleball courts down at the side of the Herb Hollinger museum, and a local cement crew set the post sleeves in place. One last big job that is being handled by an outside company, the resurfacing of tennis courts 3, 4, and 5 over by the bike shack, and the painting of the new pickle ball court has suffered a bit of a delay due to the cold nights we have still been having. The crew needs the overnight temps to be above 50 degrees for their work to happen. The crew manager has been in consistent contact with us and is confident that the work will be done before the campers arrive on the 18th of June.
I have spent most of my time in May finishing up work on camps newest staff housing unit, the Snuggery. I was tasked with two big projects: replacing the basement exterior door and screen door that had both been neglected for years and suffered from some major rot issues, and reworking the basement south facing wall and installing four new single hung windows to replace old non-openable windows. Both jobs became quite involved due to the excessive rot I discovered in the sill plate and under the siding. The back wall had some bad carpenter ant damage as well that I had to deal with. But I’m happy to report that I was able to put the final touches on the building this morning and the crew is at work furnishing the house that will be the home of ten very happy staff members. This afternoon, I will rejoin the crew around camp making repairs here and there that are left to get the place ready to rock for another season. It’s great to see the place filled with life and activity after the long winter hiatus!
Excited to see the first bus pull up to the gates, it’s Caretaker Joe At Camp.
By Joe Crain
Old Man Winter’s last (but substantial) blast of winter lined up with the very end of March. It took a couple weeks but things are at last looking spring like again here at camp. It did take most of the first two weeks of April to melt off the 14-inch tantrum left behind, but things have started to green up and several days in the 60s over the past couple weeks have got the spring peepers and wood frogs singing there oh-so-loud spring chorus in the ponds and wet ditches around camp. And, I glimpsed one of my favorite signs that spring is actually determined to stay put and fight off the last throws of winter: the crocus and daffodils have emerged and started to bloom! Nothing gets me in the spring mood better than the bright cheery yellow of daffodil blossoms bobbing in a warm spring breeze. The big snow at the end of March and the bit of rain we received at the end of April have gone a long way to relieving the drought conditions the abnormally dry winter had left us. And looking at the weather pattern for the next week or so, we will be getting more rain and should be close to normal precipitation for this time in the season soon.
We have had plenty of indoor work to get us through the early spring storms of snow and rain. But – not in the caretaker’s shop, as we do most springs; this year we have been spending our early spring days rehabbing a new staff housing acquisition camp has made. It’s a little brown house that sits just to the east of the Little House driveway. The little cabin even has its own name: The Snuggery. The Snuggery sits on a lot that is surrounded by camp land; as a matter of fact the lot that the cabin sits on was once camp land as well. At some point in the late 40s the lot was acquired by a long time staff member, “Big Pete” Peterson, who at the time had worked for camp for about 20 summers, and who’s time with camp would end after 33 years of service to our beloved institution. Here is how Nardie and Sally Stein describe Big Pete in their history of camp, Keep the Fires Burning: “Big Pete Peterson was an iconic figure, bigger than life to the campers whose years he spanned, 1933-1966. He served camp loyally as a cabin councilor, craft shop director, trip staff member, and assistant director in charge of the kitchen ordering and operation. Pete was always willing to help where ever needed. No one who met Pete could forget the size of his hands or the strength of his handshake. Big Pete was a willing worker, a friend to all, a trusted leader, and thoroughly dedicated to camp. He was a can do guy.”
Pete and his family built the little cabin in 1949, the original plan book and some paper work from the time was discovered by caretaker Andy as he was starting to clean out the house. The Snuggery was still occupied by Big Pete’s wife Verna Peterson in 1995 when I joined the camp caretaking crew. Verna was a very sweet and interesting woman who must have been in her mid to late 70s at the time. Verna was a bit of a stuff collector and caretaker Andy spent most of the first few weeks in the house sorting and relocating much of the leftovers in her “collection” to the Goodwill shops and thrift shops in our area. Some of the old furniture will still be usable, but a lot had to be cleaned out of the house. Once Andy got the house cleared of the extra furnishings, he washed all the walls of the mildew accumulated over several years of the house being unoccupied. I got into the Snuggery rehab at the start of the month and set about painting the freshly washed walls of the two main floor bedrooms and living room while Andy set to work painting in the kitchen and dining room. In the middle of the month seasonal Caretaker/Kitchen Manager Cody Keys came back to us from his winter hibernation and was set to work on the basement floor which needed a good clean and a coat of paint. Our only construction plans for the Snuggery are to turn an existing pantry off the dining room into a small powder room with just a commode and sink which will out fit the Snuggery with a second restroom which should let the house accommodate 6-8 staff members comfortably.
Staring at the calendar wondering how it could possibly be the start of May already it is caretaker Joe At Camp.
By Joe Crain
The abnormally warm and dry winter here in the Lake Nebagamon area has carried over into our early spring. That is, our meteorological spring, but unfortunately, not our actual calendar spring. Yes, the modern world has two “springs”. Meteorological spring starts on March first, whereas astronomical spring on the calendar spring hit this year on March 19th (Spring Equinox) — at least according to the calendar on my wall. I myself have never really accepted the meteorological March 1st date because as a longtime resident of the Northwoods of Wisconsin I have first-hand knowledge of how harsh and winter like the first half of March can be, and almost always is. Interestingly, it is almost always not until around the third week of the month that the weather turns to anything resembling spring, which unsurprisingly is right about the time of the equinox. I only bring this fact up because of the odd March weather we have experienced this year, the weather ended up coming to us backwards! This year we had almost unbelievably beautiful weather for the first three weeks of the month. As a matter of fact, we broke several high temperature records in those three weeks reaching well into the 60s on several days. The thin ice cover on the lake and all of the warm weather also broke the record for the earliest ice off ever recorded. The majority of the lake was ice free on the 12th and all of the lake was clear by the morning of the 13th, about a month earlier than average. With the total lack of snow on the ground and the lake ice free it seemed like this year the meteorologists had it right. It was so nice that we were even able to get out of the shop and get started on some outdoor work.
It was smooth and sunny sailing, right through the start astronomical spring… and then things flipped. The temperatures dropped below average and the weatherman started hinting around about a storm coming our way from the west that had potential to be the biggest snow event of our anemic winter. The biggest storm of the season so far had only delivered about four inches of snow, so it wasn’t going to take a whopper to clear that bar. Well a whopper is what we got! It came six days after calendar spring began on the 19th. The storm started on the evening of Sunday the 24th and lasted until the afternoon on Wednesday the 27th. The storm dumped 14 inches of snow on us here in Lake Nebagamon and some places up in the Duluth area received 21 inches over those four days! So oddly we received more snow in those four days of spring then we had gotten for the whole actual winter, and those areas that got the 21 inches up in Duluth surpassed the whole winter total for them by about four inches! If nothing else, this winter sure has been a record-smasher. The other thing this winter has been is very confusing to my feet. When I should have been putting skis on, I was lacing up my hiking boots and when the time came for me to be putting the hiking boots on, I was buckling into my skis. I know if my feet had hands they would be throwing them up in disgust!
Spending a lot of time lately wondering who will be seated in the two most important Camp Nebagamon related jobs: the future Camp Director and the future owners of the Lake Nebagamon Dairy Queen, it’s Caretaker Joe At Camp.
By Joe Crain
With just a few days left in the month of February, the scene outside my office window was looking very April. The only snow in view was a few stubborn low piles in the shadiest areas near my yard. A thin and bedraggled patch of ice was seen on the pond area out back of my house. Caretaker Andy found only six inches of ice out on Lake Nebagamon on his last trip out to catch a fish from under the ice. (The fishing has been pretty poor, he also reported.) Typically there would be between 20 and 30 inches of ice at this point in an average winter! Thankfully, area ice-adventurers have been practicing caution and no one has been foolish enough to take anything larger than a small 4-wheeler out on the ice. Strangely, for almost all of February, we have had but one day of winter-like temperatures each week. For the first three weeks of the month it was on Friday. Each week’s forecast called for temps 15-20 degrees above average for both daytime highs as well as nighttime lows. But each week the forecast called for average or below average temps for Thursday night through Saturday morning with above average predicted again by Saturday afternoon. So we would go through the week with temps well into the 30s and even into the 40s with an occasional 50 thrown in, and then plummet deep into the 20s on Friday then bounce right back to the mid-30s or higher for the weekend and start of the next week. On the “Winter” Fridays, we might see a dusting to an inch of snow fall, which of course was gone by Sunday morning. According to the National Weather Service in Duluth, this is the least amount of snowfall at this point in the winter since record keeping began!
Of course, all of this dry warm winter weather has wreaked havoc on all of the area’s winter festivities. Ice fishing contests have all been canceled due to thin ice. Almost all of the dog sled races in the region had to be canceled. At least up in Alaska, they are having a snowy winter and were able to hold the Jr. Iditarod sled dog race. The race covers 150 miles in the Alaskan wilderness and is run by teens from 14-17 years old. With no local races held this year, all area eyes were on the Jr. Iditarod watching a local 17-year-old from Brule, Wisconsin, just up County Road B from camp. Well Morgen Martens didn’t let his local fans down as he took second place in the Jr Iditarod! Closer to home, The American Birkebeiner, the largest cross country ski marathon in the US, was under threat of cancelation due to no snow. This year marked the 50th anniversary of the 50 kilometer race from Cable to Hayward, Wisconsin just south of Lake Nebagamon. Any of you who have paddled the Namekagon River with camp’s tripping program should be somewhat familiar with the Hayward area; the river snakes parallel to the Birkie course, just on the other side of Highway 63. Being the 50th Anniversary running of the race the organizers decided cancellation was not an option, and began snow making and hauling to produce a 10-kilometer track at the head of the normal race course. You may recall from past articles that Camp Nebagamon is well represented at the Birkie. This year, although many Nebagamites signed up for the race, only former tripper Emily Prud’homme and Anders Burvall, not exactly staff but longtime camp family member and husband of our nurse Amber Burvall, were able to overcome the conditions and attend on race day. (An honorable mention goes to trip driver Amy Mack who only missed the race due to illness.) The real story here is Anders; he had never skied before signing up for the big race and with little chance of seeing any snow back home in his area of California he had learned on dryland “roller skis” to skate ski. Anders had it all planned out to come to camp a week early to get some practice on actual snow and actual skies. Well when Anders arrived the Saturday before the big event wouldn’t you know it, no snow to practice on! So Anders had his very first ski, on actual skis and snow, the day of the race! A brave soul who likes a good challenge, he went forward undeterred. According to Caretaker Andy who attended the event, Anders had surprisingly good form on his two laps of the ten-kilometer course. Anders said it was much harder than he expected, especially ascending the hills! He was able to complete the 20 kilometers in about two hours. I think his pluck and fortitude is a great example for all of the Camp Nebagamon Family!
Gearing up for this week’s touch of winter, which is predicted for Wednesday this week, its caretaker Joe At Camp.
By Joe Crain
After last year’s record breaking snow total of 137.1 inches (As recorded by the nearest National Weather service station in Duluth, MN) a lot of us up here in the Northwoods of Wisconsin were hoping that this winter would be a bit kinder to us… But I don’t think many of us were hoping for things to be as snow free and mild as we have been having this winter season! The only decent snowfall we received this season came in October. That month, we saw more snow fall than had fallen in both the months of November and December combined! The last time that happened was 1913, according to Minnesota Public Radio’s Updraft weather blog. Of course, all of that snow melted away well before the Christmas holiday. At the start of January the National Weather Service in Duluth, MN had recorded a 29.8 inch snow deficit compared to total-snowfall averages by that point in the winter. The first week of January saw temperatures 10 to 15 degrees above average which forced me to go hiking instead of cross country skiing on my annual first week of January vacation. Although it was some nice trekking on the local stretch of the North Country National Scenic Trail, I would have much preferred to be sliding along on my skis than stomping down the trail in my hiking boots. Finally, in the second week of the month, things turned wintery, as the temperatures fell and a bit of snow started to accumulate again. For about a week we had what seemed like fairly normal winter weather. It wasn’t what I would call an Ideal stretch of winter weather though, because by the next week the mercury suddenly plummeted to 10 to 15 degrees below average for January! This meant that we were dealing with below-zero highs and -15 degree overnights… but beggars aren’t in a position to choose.
The snow that came wasn’t but a few inches at first, and was just enough to coat Lake Nebagamon enough to ski its surface. Finally the ’23-’24 ski season was underway! It felt great to be out there cruising along on my skis! I was able to get out on the lake until the 14th when the bitter cold swept in. Below-zero temperatures are just a bit too cold to be out skiing. At the time, I thought it would just be the usual short burst of cold and I would be out there soon enough, but little did I know. From the 14th to the 19th things stayed chilly, and we welcomed a few small snowfalls. I sat inside, warming up, dreaming about skiing through camp as the ground total finally reached about six inches — enough depth to ski over the ample tree roots sprinkled through the Camp Nebagamon ski/bike trail system. Around the 20th of the month the mercury again started to rise and I was indeed able to ski camps trails! Unfortunately the mercury didn’t stop rising when it got to the average temp for mid-January, and just kept going up. I was able to ski the complete five-mile winter trail through camp twice before the paltry snow cover succumbed to the spring like temperatures. By the 25th of the month the daily high temps were again back to 10-15 degrees above average, leaving us hovering just above freezing for the last two weeks of the month. With the a high on January 31st of 45 degrees and above freezing temperatures predicted through the first week of February I suspect we will again be snow free in no time. Yes, that’s right, I have put the skies away again and have put the hiking boots back on.
Debating with myself wither this new hybrid Fall-like/Spring-like season should be called “Spall” or “Fring” it’s Caretaker Joe At Camp.
By Joe Crain
As of writing this column, unless some drastic change comes to the few remaining days of the month, this will go into the record books as the warmest December in our area ever recorded. We had no snow on the ground and daily temps 10 to 20 degrees above average throughout the month of December. At 48 degrees on December 24th, Duluth, MN set a record high temp for Christmas Eve. At 54 degrees on Christmas Day, the twin Cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis set an all-time high record for the day. Last year we had 20 inches of snow on the ground by the end of November, this year we haven’t seen 20 inches of snowfall total from October through the end of December! We had more snowfall in October this year than the whole month of December has managed. But although we have been in a snow drought, we have not been experiencing a drought! This December has seen several rain and drizzle events, and over the Christmas Holiday weekend we saw several inches of rainfall. Lake Nebagamon has managed to stay ice-covered throughout this warm December, but with a mere 4-5 inches of ice depth, it has remained rather dangerous and has seen few people out ice fishing on the lake. I did see one brave soul out ice skating the other day; the skater seemed to be enjoying the snow free ice but was being careful to stay as close to shore as they could. I’ve also seen a few brave souls out trying their luck for some fish through the ice, as four inches of ice is just safe enough to walk on. Those I have seen out on the ice have brought little more with them than their pole, ice auger, and a bucket to sit on. No village of ice houses on the lake so far this year.
Around camp we have been taking advantage of the warm weather and lack of snow which has allowed us to keep driving through camp, taking care of projects. We have been able to cut a few more dead trees, and I have continued to work on the cabin rescreening project I started several off-seasons ago. Axman 6 and 7, the last 2 cabins in that village to be rescreened are being worked on. It seems so odd to be freely driving around camp at the end of December!
Of course our winter recreation has been severely impacted by the lack of snow and warm temps. My week of vacation that I save each year for a cross country skiing adventure the first week of January looks likely to turn into a week of hiking this year. Fortunately the North Country Trail miles that I have left in the area are equally beautiful and relaxing regardless of the mode of travel one is able to use, skies or hiking boots. Before the rare Christmas rains fell I had been hoping for just a few inches of snow so I could get the cross country ski season underway with some lake skiing. But alas that was not to be and the lake is now covered with large puddles rather than fresh snow. Thankfully a bit of winter spirit has returned with a little snow on the 26th that, though it did not stick on the ground, was sticky enough to coat the trees and bushes in the area with a light flocking of white that has given us the illusion that it is winter!
Hoping that the second half of the winter season brings us some actual winter and the joys of winter activities, it’s Caretaker Joe At Camp.
Throughout the session, Director Noah Stein and other staff will post updates to keep you informed of the activities taking place at camp. If you would like to speak with Noah directly, call him at (715) 374-2275 or by email at [email protected]