We’ve never had a winter like this before, so on a daily basis we keep wondering what happens next? So far our trails are staying remarkably good. Guests seem happy and for us, it’s super important that you leave here feeling like you had an enjoyable time. In spite of this weirdo winter, most of our guests have had great winter fun.

We’re working at making that happen. Both Bearskin and Golden Eagle have been regularly out grooming early or in the middle of the night to maintain the trail base. Last week we bought the world’s most humongous Otter sled (seriously the size of a truck bed!) that we can use to haul snow from the lake and to the trails if needed. Quinn and Bob experimented today with their unique methodology — use the snowblower on the lake to blow snow into the sled, use the snowmobile to pull the loaded sled up to the ski trails, shovel the snow onto the trails, then return to the lake and do it all again. At this point we do still have a solid trail base, but they’re confident that if snow thins out in places then they have a plan to keep it going.

This week will be a bit like March skiing. Afternoon temperatures are predicted to be mid-30s. So use the usual spring plan and get out skiing in the morning. The snow may soften up in mid-afternoon — or maybe not. It’s been OK. Later afternoon or night skiing seems to be staying decent too. Quinn and Kate generally ski around 5 PM, while Bob has been going out on the night trails with a headlamp after supper. So far the trails are holding up well. Bob reports that the trails at 8 PM are fast!

Overall, the assessment from guests has been that we are maintaining good skiing. Almost everybody seems to be having fun and almost everyone is rebooking, so thanks! We so appreciate the vote of confidence.

The forecast looks like the warmer days end soon, and we revert to more normal winter temperatures. The radar map for the entire US has shown minimal moisture everywhere, but starting next week it looks like moisture may be circulating again. We promise Mother Nature we will not complain about having too much snow ever again.

There’s not much cross-country skiing in all of Minnesota right now, but we’re happy to report that we’re skiing on the Central Gunflint Trail System. We certainly don’t have the snow we are used to accumulating by now, but our trails are in so much better shape than in most of the state.

Although we haven’t had the big dump of snow that usually characterizes our early winters, we do seem to be accumulating more snow on a daily basis, inch by inch. At this point Bearskin has about 20 K of groomed trails with tracks and corduroy, about half on lakes and half in the woods.The Golden Eagle side of the trail system has also created about 10K of lake trails and 2 K of forest trails, with more to come soon. Of course, both sides of the trail system are available to you when you stay at either resort or buy a Central Gunflint Trail System ski pass. We are all working very hard to make good skiing out of this snow.

The groomers have been out almost every day and overall, people are fairly pleased to be able to ski. Quinn and Kate, who are both high performance skiers, have been skiing Summer Home and Campground almost every afternoon to check the conditions. They’ve been putting in a lot of K and report that the trails may have a few thin spots, but for the most part conditions are good.

This area is in a cold snap now, a classic January freeze, but we’re about to warm up again. We have snow in the forecast almost every day — still no giant snowstorms, but the daily accumulations do add up. Quinn and Bob are thinking that the next trail to open may be Bear Cub, which always gets more snow than the trails at lower elevations. They’re keeping an eye on it and will go out as soon as we amass enough more snow.

There’s a lot of talk on the Gunflint Trail these days about voo-doo. 😂 We had such an incredibly overwhelming amount of snow during the past two years that at least 3 resorts on the Gunflint Trail (including us) spent huge sums of money on additional new snow removal equipment. Four ski areas took delivery on new or new-to-them Pisten Bully groomers. What’s the old Yiddish proverb? “Man plans, God laughs.” Yep. We’re not worried. We’ve been here long enough to know that one of these days soon we will get pummeled with snow and meanwhile, the skiing is still pretty darn good.

We have a limited number of cabin openings available next week. Come up and ski with us! Give us a call at 218-388-2292 or email stay@bearskin.com and we will help you make a plan.

This is one for the record books — we groomed for the first time this winter season on January 6, 2024. We finally got snow, with lots more to to come.We weren’t honestly too worried, but we were a bit disoriented by it all. We’ve spent many of the past winters whining and complaining about our October and November early snowstorms. This year taught us all a lesson about early snow — we will appreciate it next year.

Our first snowfall was just enough to get skiing on the Central Gunflint Trail System started. Bearskin and Golden Eagle have both groomed extensive loops on the lakes with our Tidd-Tech snowmobile groomers.(Our lakes are safe for skiers, don’t worry — these long, narrow lakes froze early and guests have traversed the lakes extensively with skates while we waited for snow.) In addition, Quinn has been able to use the Pisten Bully to groom Campground and Summer Home Trails.The land trails have a skate deck but no tracks yet — he needs just a little more snow to add tracks.

We will continue to keep grooming these trails and adding to them on a regular basis.It’s snowing this afternoon and we have a fairly substantial amount of snow predicted for this evening, as well as more snow in the forecast for the rest of the week. It has certainly been a slow start to winter, but now it’s happening.

We get asked almost daily how our cross-country ski resort business has been doing without any snow so far.Thank you so much for asking, but don’t worry about us. We are busy and have had very few cancellations. Bearskin is lucky to have a loyal following of very energetic guests who made the most out of the past few weeks of ice with no snow cover. Check out our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/BearskinLodge/ to see video and pictures of the memorable activities our guests enjoyed. They will reminisce about those unusual experiences for years to come. We’d prefer our normal snow, of course, but the “wild ice” weeks were pretty cool.

We will keep you posted as we get more snow and continue to open trails. We are looking forward to getting back to “real winter” on the Gunflint Trail!

And hey, if you come up to ski then stop in to see our friends at Trail Center or at the Hungry Jack Lodge restaurant. Both businesses have created ice skating opportunities just outside their restaurants that will be super fun after enjoying a great Gunflint Trail meal. See you soon.

Video of grooming the lake: https://fb.watch/ps4aYz84mT/