By Herman the Mouse
Hi-
My name is Herman the mouse. I’ve lived in the Mini-School trip room for a long time, hidden away among the Duluth packs. Occasionally I stow away on a Mini-School trip and write about it for Com-Mini-Cations. I’d like to tell you about the 1999 Mini-School Boundary Waters Winter Camping trip.
Actually, I thought I was going to Utah. Doug’s been talking about that trip a lot, and I’ve been dreaming about the desert and visiting my cousins out there. Y’know, hot sun, hot chicks, cactus, beautiful desert scenery. But when I jumped in the van on March 10th and saw all the skis and snowshoes, I knew I’d made a mistake.
And then, when I realized who was going on the trip, I got scared. Some of the biggest, baddest, meanest, gnarliest, craziest Mini-Schoolers that have ever been- Mike Ayotte {The Hunter}, Charlie Urbia {Killer}, Matt Thompson {Crabass}, Jake Anderson {Loose Cannon}, Matt Guffan {Muffin}, Tony Wegler {Chaos}, Josh Riesgies {Rice Cakes}, and J.J Day {The Growler}. I felt a little safe with Rice Cakes, and I knew I’d eat well because of all the food sloppy Wegler would drop on the ground, but I knew my life would be in peril if Ayotte or Urbia or Thompson ever saw me.
The trip left at 8:00 am and made its first stop at the Grant House Restaurant in Rush City. I sneaked in in Doug’s jacket pocket and positioned myself right under Wegler’s chair and had a good share of his omelet and sausage. Thompson’s bad disposition was not improved by the fact that his order got screwed up, one of several times this happened during the trip.
After breakfast we drove pretty straight to Grand Marais where we stayed at the East Bay Hotel. I bunked with Doug so Ayotte wouldn’t see me. Everyone ate dinner, had a whirlpool, and turned in to get a good rest for the next day.
After breakfast at the South of the Border Cafe {Jake thought it was going to be a Mexican restaurant- The Canadian Border, Jake} everyone piled into the van for the ride out to the Kekekabic Trail. We got there loaded up, and headed into the woods.
It was a beautiful day, the trail was well packed and the group got into Bingschick Lake, the destination by lunch time. Everyone got to work cutting wood, chopping a hole in the ice for water, setting up tents and making snow trenches for sleeping and getting camp organized. I moved right into Doug’s tent and made my home in the pocket of his down jacket. I knew I had to get good and warm for it was going to be a cold night.
It was. Ten below. Jake, Charlie, Mike, Matt T, and Matt G made a big trench. They kind of forgot how Doug told them that a snow trench had to take advantage of the insulating value of the snow. Their trench was way too big and had no snow on the top of it. Jake got so cold that when he had to go to the bathroom during the night he went into a Hefty garbage bag. Ayotte said he’d never been more uncomfortable or cold in his life. Thompson was crabby, as usual. Charlie and Muffin were more subdued but I could tell they were cold.
After a good oatmeal breakfast, work on quinzhees {snow shelters} began. Doug hollowed one out for a couple of guys from a big pile of snow that J.J and Wegler had made the day before. It looked great. Snow is a super insulator-really warm. All of my country cousins live under the snow all winter, making tunnels and eating seeds they’ve stored from summer. I managed to visit some of them during the week- the kids sure are getting big! The other guys made a big pile of snow and let it set up so they could hollow it out the next day.
In the afternoon Doug went for a snowshoe hike up to Jap and Rally Lakes. He was checking to see if there was slush on the lakes which would make it difficult for skiing and snowshoeing. There wasn’t. When he got back he, J.J, and Charlie fixed up a super spaghetti dinner. Again, Wegler shared his with me.
We had quite a few critters around camp. Besides my cousins, there were several Canada jays, cousins of the blue jay, who are camp robbers and are always looking for a handout. In the evening we often heard the call of a barred owl – hoo- hoohoo; hoo- hoo- hoo- hoo. Boy I burrowed deeper into Doug’s jacket pocket when I heard that! But what really scared me were the pine martens. A member of the weasel family, pine martens live mainly on red squirrels and mice! Yikes. A couple were always hanging around camp, eating the food thrown away in the sump hole. One day Ayotte caught one under a sled. Boy was it mad! I thought it was going to attack Ayotte and everything else in sight, including me.
On Saturday morning some of the guys finished the other quinzhee while others wrote in their journals. The weather was not as cold, the big trench had been abandoned in favor of the quinzhee Doug built and the tents, so everyone was more comfortable and happy- that statement is relative, of course, concerning Thompson and Urbia.
Around lunch time Doug decided to take Matt T, Matt G, Ayotte, Jake, and Rice Cakes on a ski up to Jap Lake. Charlie, Wegler and JJ decided to stay back, lay in a good store of firewood, and clean up camp. They then were to snowshoe in the opposite direction from the above group and meet somewhere along the route.
Now I have to tell you, for an old guy Doug can ski pretty darn fast. On warmer days I like to hide in his fanny pack, stick my head out and watch the world fly by. We whipped across Honker Lake, through a swamp, and across Jap Lake where a bunch of men were fishing for lake trout. Up to now the big tough senior guys had thought that Rice Cakes was kind of a sally, even though he slept in a snow trench too the first night and never complained. They sure changed their minds when he left them behind on skis. He couldn’t keep up with Doug, especially climbing hills, but he could drop Loose Cannon, Muffin, The Hunter and Crabass whenever he wanted to.
After we got back, Doug went on another 10 mile ski down to Gillis Lake. He planned to take the rest of the group on a ski there tomorrow and wanted to check conditions. He found Gillis Lake occupied by about 25 students and teachers from Blaine High School, also out on a winter camping trip. A Blaine teacher told Doug that this was a reward trip for their top students, that he’d never take any students who might misbehave.
When Doug got back to camp he ran into an old friend, Maury Reller, whom he’d met a couple years ago while winter camping in the BWCA. Maury is 78 years young, still winter camping and hiking all over. They had a good reunion, talking about retirement, tripping and all sorts of stuff.
Some of the guys, who had piled up snow that morning for a quinzhee, began to hollow it out, Ole Crabass went at it with a vengeance and sure enough, it collapsed on him. Everyone rushed over to shovel him out, thinking he would suffocate. Doug just laughed and hollered, “Don’t hit him in the head with the shovel.”
On Sunday Morning Doug led everyone on the 10 mile ski over to Gillis Lake. It was a great day to be alive- not a cloud in the sky, no wind, bright sunshine. Some of the guys skied with their shirts off and got a suntan- JJ got a burn. Jake whined and didn’t want to go, but when he heard about the Blaine school group up there he thought there would be some “hotties” so he came along. We had a great lunch by a pretty stream, saw where some otters had been sliding, and talked about the Native Americans who had lived here in the past and the story about them and the fur trade that Doug had been reading to us in the evenings. Really cool.
The Blaine group had left Gilllis Lake by the time we got there but their “top students” had sure left a mess behind-fishing line, bungee cords, aluminum foil, plastic bags. They’d also built fires in bad places along the lake-shore and on top of nice bluffs. Doug was furious!! He gathered up as much of their trash as he could, stuffed it into his day pack and when we got home after the trip he mailed it, along with a nasty letter, to the teacher in charge of Blaine’s “top students.”
Monday was a kick-back day where most of the group went fishing up on Jap Jake. Muffin and Chaos Wegler each caught a trout and everyone ate the fish and most all the rest of the food that night. The weather was getting warm, too warm to walk on the quinzhees as Doug and Charlie found out Tuesday morning.
We all left the BWCA on Tuesday morning, stopped and had a great pizza dinner at the Pizza Pub in Pine City, and got home that evening about 8:00 p.m. Everyone had a terrific trip, especially JJ, who wanted to stay and have Doug pick him up on the spring canoe trip. I got fatter, stayed warm, saw my cousins and avoided Killer, Hunter and Loose Cannon. It was good to get home to the trips room.