By Joe Crain
When I left off my article last month I was wondering if the predicted storm was going to boom or bust. Well, though it reached us a day later than predicted, it defiantly boomed. Ironically my use of the term boom was quite apt as this storm started out as a “bombogenesis” or “bomb cyclone” as some more excitable meteorologists call it. According to the national weather service a storm undergoes bombogenesis when the storm’s central barometric pressure drops at least 24 millibars (a millibars is a way of measuring air pressure) in 24 hours. When this particular storm hit the west coast it only took 18 hours for the air pressure to drop the required 24 millibars creating what is described as essentially a winter hurricane over land! And that is exactly what the storm looked like as it was tracked by radar and moved across the country heading for Lake Nebagamon. When it finally reached us it had already dropped feet of snow in the Rockies and left a 20-inch swath of snow across the length of South Dakota. Then it hit Minnesota and turned north, and blasting us for 2 days with pounding 1- and 2-inch-an-hour snow and wind gusts into the 50 mile an hour range. When it finally passed out of our region on December 1st we were left with just over 20 inches of snow on top of the 10 inches we had received just before Thanksgiving Day. Boom, just like that we were thrown into what looked like the end of January, 21 days before the 1st day of meteorological winter! Four foot snow banks suddenly lined all of the roads; many streets in Duluth and Superior had so many buried immovable cars on them that they are still clearing that snow two weeks later! Here at camp we spent a full work day plowing the circle drive behind the Big House and hand digging in to the propane tanks and doorways into the areas we need to have access to throughout the winter months.
The somewhat tarnished silver lining to the storm was that it delivered plenty of snow to kick off the 2019 ski season in the area! The tarnish on that silver though was that the Miracle on Snow, my 1975 Artic Cat Pantera snow mobile that I use to groom the bike trails through out camp into ski trails, can’t handle more than 10 inches or so of snow at a time! What is an avid cross country skier to do? Break out the back country skis and stomp out the trails with leg power, of course!! My investment in the short but very wide back country ski package last winter is paying big dividends this year! Stomping your way through 20-inches-plus of snow is a lot more work and much slower than machine grooming. On the “Miracle” it takes me about an hour to groom the whole five mile CNST (Camp Nebagamon Ski Trail) into skiable tracks. On the BC’s I made it about 1.3 miles in just under an hour on my first outing. My second outing lasted about an hour as well and I added about an additional mile past the tracks of my first outing. On the third trail blazing effort I skied over the first two miles of already laid track and was able to add an additional mile in about one hour and 45 minutes, bring my tracked in length up to about 3.25 miles. All of this may seem like a lot of work but I look at it as productive exercise rather than work and with my upcoming back country ski trip to the Sylvania Wilderness area of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, a non-motorized old growth preserve in the heart of the Ottawa National Forest — it is great preparation. I will be spending five days solo skiing through the huge trees on the ungroomed trails and lakes of the Sylvania wilderness. With our winter break just ahead and all of that deep snow in camp I should be in tip top shape for this year’s winter “Big Trip”.
Determined to track the full five miles of the CNST with leg power alone, it’s Caretaker Joe At Camp.