We spent the morning out packing the Lace Lake trail. For those not familiar with this trail, Lace Lake is a short loop trail that connects Poplar Creek to the Banadad Trail. The last few years it has struggled to get groomed, and starting this year we’ll be grooming it. We’d planned to start grooming it last year but never had the snow, so we’re excited to be able to get out there soon and give it the first Pisten Bully grooming in decades!
We groomed Summer Home Road, Campground, The Lit Loop, Lower Beaver Dam, Ox Cart and Bear Cub. We were lucky to avoid the rain that came down closer to the shore. It should be some great skiing out there. Poplar Creek is very close, and hopefully will be ready within a few days.
We went out and touched up some of the trails today. It’s a bit cold for skiing, but a few hearty day skiers have ventured out. We did find one warm spot on the Poplar Creek trail!
We re-groomed Summer Home, Campground, the Lit Loop and Beaver Dam after the dusting we received last night. Ox Cart was groomed yesterday and looks like some great classic skiing. Golden Eagle was out and groomed the trails on the north side of Flour Lake as well as Logging Camp, Beaver Dam and Ridge Run.
We finished grooming this morning just in time for the snow to start up again! Summer Home, Campground, the Lit Loop, and Lower Beaver Dam are all groomed and in nice shape. We’ll get out and open up some more trails over the next couple days.
On the north side, Golden Eagle reports that Deer Mouse and Logging Camp trails have been groomed and are suitable for good skis. Red Pine, Cross Fox and Moose Ridge are tracked in most places except a few rocky areas. Use your lesser skis on these trails until we get another round of snow.
We re-groomed Summer Home, Campground, and Lower Beaver Dam this morning. We had a little mist in the air yesterday, and a quick tilling brought everything back to life. Summer Home and Campground are in great shape, Lower Beaver Dam doesn’t have a classic track yet and is best skied with rock skis. We’ve had good reports coming in from the local High School team staying with us.
Ski season 2024-2025 is underway. Looking back at the ski posts from last year, it’s pretty funny to see how the posts just trailed off — just like the skiing did. We actually kept the skiing alive until early March, by moving snow from the lake to the trails and by creating a maze of trails on the lake. People had a surprising amount of fun last winter in spite of the low snow conditions. We’ll all remember winter 2023-2024 as uniquely enjoyable because of the different activities everyone could do–hiking into the BWCA, exploring summer trips like Rose Falls, playing with the kick sleds on the lake ice, ice skating far into the wilderness on the lakes. But we didn’t want to do it again this year.
Fortunately, it is looking like winter 2024-2025 might be a snowy one. After an extended autumn, we started getting snow after Thanksgiving and it has been snowing constantly ever since. Bearskin tends to get its snow in big dumps, followed by addtional little snowfalls almost daily. That’s the pattern we are seeing so far this year. We hope it continues.
Summer Home and Campground ski trails have been pisten bully groomed several times now, the latest grooming being Saturday morning. We have the Cook County High School ski team and the Team Birkie skiers out on those trails today and tomorrow, so there has been a lot of ski action on that grooming. Our forecast is for a possible 8″ more of snow Sunday and Monday, with more snow forecast for later in the week. That’s probably just the right amount snow we need to start grooming the rockier, hillier sections of our trail system. We’ve done preparatory packing work on many of the trails on both the north and south sides of the system, so now we just need the snow. We’re ready!
Both Bearskin and Golden Eagle are selling ski passes now, including day passes and season passes. Stop in and get yourself set up for a winter of great skiing!
We lost it all on Friday. The heavy rains came down, the snow that made it possible to groom trails on the lakes turned to standing water, and the snow on our other trails mostly melted. Talk about discouraging, because we’ve worked so hard to make good trails out of mediocre conditions.
BUT, hurray! We are working our way back to skiing! Quinn has groomed trails on Summer Home Road and Campground. Quinn skied on it this evening and wasn’t thrilled about Summer Home. You will have to remove your skis to cross the culvert area in the big dip on Summer Home, and there are some “stop your skis” rocks, he said. Needs continuing snow — we will get there. Campground, on the other hand, is fairly good because of all the snow we hauled to it.
We haven’t been able to redo the lovely, long lake trail we had on East Bearskin because of snow/water slush. We’ll be keeping an eye on that every day until it hardens up again. However, they were able to groom some fairly nice ski trails on the south shore of Aspen Lake.
On the Golden Eagle side, they’ve groomed the Flour Lake Campground trail and added some ski trails back on Flour Lake.
Is it as good as our usual outstanding ski trails? Nope. Is it probably the best skiing on natural snow still available in Minnesota? Yes, it likely is. And we’re happy to say, people seem to be having a pretty good time. We have snow, we have winter conditions, and the temperatures are pleasant enough to get out and enjoy the world.
The weather reports indicate that we are returning to more typical winter conditions, with small snowfalls every day. The forecast looks promising for snow in the future. We’ll never catch up now to the massive amounts of snow we had in 2022 and 2023, but getting adequate snow would be a wonderful surprise. We will continue to do everything we can dream-up to create a good winter experience for our guests.
Trail update: unexpectedly hard, warm rain last night made a bit of a mess of things. Conditions deteriorated today. The trails are not good at the moment. It was a very sudden turn of events today for a trail system that previously survived quite a few setbacks so far this winter.
We are waiting for the coming temperature drop and possible snow tonight to reassess and come up with our next plan. We will keep you posted. We managed to keep our skiing going through some pretty frustrating conditions and we will continue to think creatively.
Meanwhile, this is a great opportunity to take some winter hiking adventures. A Rose Falls hike has been a popular destination this week, as well as Honeymoon Bluff.
We will update when we have a plan.
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.
Bearskin Lodge Ski Trail Reports 