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/