Noquemanon Trails Network

I had the pleasure of attending the Noquemanon Trails Network's annual fundraiser, the Snowball, this past Friday evening. What a hoot. Good food, great people and a fine cause.

The NTN is a non-profit umbrella trails group for most of the mountain biking and skiing trails in the Marquette, Michigan region. The same trails where great events like the Noquemanon Ski Marathon  and Superior Bike Fest are held. The trails that make the Marquette region such a great place to live and play.

I was proud to support NTN at the snowball this year with a donation of a 20x30 canvas gallery wrap. The print was auctioned off live and brought in $350 for the Noquemanon Trails. There's some gas in the groomer, and I'm glad to help.

See you on the trails.

Aaron Peterson is a photographer and writer based near Marquette and Lake Superior in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.  For more of his work visit www.aaronpeterson.net

Recent Work-Marquette Backcountry Ski

Here's the December 2011 Traverse magazine profile I wrote and shot featuring Marquette inventor David Ollila and his Marquette Backcountry Ski. The ski was developed for the Lake Superior hills of Michigan's Upper Peninsula but is proving popular all over.

 

Aaron Peterson is a photographer and writer based near Marquette and Lake Superior in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.  For more of his work visit www.aaronpeterson.net

Recent Work-Marquette Backcountry Ski

The December issue of Traverse magazine has my five page profile of Marquette, Michigan native, entrepreneur, inventor and all around outdoor nut Dave Ollila and his latest innovation, the Marquette Backcountry Ski.

Dave O developed the Marquette Backcountry Ski (it's a mouthful, maybe just MBS?) for terrain like that found in the Upper Peninsula. Short, steep, brushy, gnarly wooded hurt locker sort of stuff--lots of potential for fun, but also for damage to those pretty, expensive skis designed for the open pow of actual mountains 1,500 miles to the west of the Lake Superior snowbelt we call home.

The ski is designed for the terrain of places like the Upper Peninsula, but what I found interesting is that it reflects the spirit of those who tend to gravitate to places like the U.P., Northern Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ontario, Vermont (maybe) etc: tough, reliable, no frills. We are not pretty or fancy, but we tend to get st#ff done. This is not the land of steez; this is the land of cheese. I could go on, but I think Keillor has used up most of the good stuff.

It's a good ski. It's a good article. Check them both out if you get the chance.

Sunburned & Smilin'

Phew, just got back from assignments shooting historic downtowns, posh bed & breakfasts (yum!) and hi-octane outdoor recreation for Travel Michigan again. Gorgeous weather with fresh snow and blue skies helped create a nice batch of images for Michigan's official tourism campaign.



But it also meant I got a jump start on my summer tan after a thorough baking (more like burning!) at Indianhead Mountain. A summer sunburn is painful and annoying, but in March in the Upper Peninsula, it's a more like a promise of good things to come.

Oh yeah, and Elvis was out on the slopes too!

Personal Grooming

Since we're talking ski trail grooming, I thought I'd share a bit about how I pack and level our massive depths of snow for our own personal loops at the farm.

This is a little embarrassing since my last post featured what has to be the coolest ski groomer ever. Ours is decidedly non-cool.

We drag a bed spring behind an old Polaris snowmobile. Round and round we drive the sled, packing the powder, and then round and round again with the bed spring to level it all out. Simple, practical, and even effective sometimes. It's an okay way to groom trails, and a really good way to mess up a bed spring.

It has been a long winter.

How we roll, eh

I found this gem at Valley Spur Ski Trails in the Hiawatha National Forest, just down the road from our homestead. It's a Chevy Blazer outfitted with tracks and used to pull cross-country ski trail grooming equipment. I love it. I wish I had two, so I could make them fight. It would be like our own little neighborhood Transformers episode.

Moving In

Still crazy busy here--deadlines, deadlines, deadlines--so here's another previously published essay about when we first moved into the farm in 2006.

The moving van lumbers up the rough dirt road and hesitates at the end of the driveway where the faded handmade sign declares this property “For Sale.” With a nervous glance at each other, we rumble forward over the gravel curb and scrape through the tunnel of overgrown cedars and apple trees into the secluded yard.

The sign is lying. This place, a 40-acre Upper Peninsula farmstead in western Alger County, is not for sale. It had been yesterday, and for several years before that, but today it’s home. This is the place my wife, Kristen, and I have been dreaming of, a place to raise chickens and children. A place to live and love while our hair gets as white as the lake effect snows the area is famous for.

A few swings of the hammer and the sign flies loose. If we have our wish it’ll never show its face again.

Like us and our blue-collared ancestors—Poles, Germans and Swedes—the buildings are sturdy and straight, but a little rough around the edges. Shingles missing here, siding sagging there, and paint but a memory in spots. The big white farmhouse, part of it made of hand-hewn logs, is surrounded by a sprinkling of tidy red outbuildings. There’s a root cellar, a shed, a garage, the old milk barn, sauna building and woodshed. At the edge of the field squats the remains of the original log cow barn.

But at the center of it all is a familiarity that we can’t explain. A sense of belonging, like a family reunion where you might not know everyone’s name but it doesn’t matter because you share the same laugh, chubby cheeks or hair color.

This farm was built by people with winter in their blood. Swedes came first, around 1900, and hewed the forest into fields and a home. Then Finlanders took over in the 1930s and didn’t let go until the last one passed on in the mid 1990s. Since then an absentee owner has let it fall into disrepair, and only rodents and coyotes have spent winters here.

A convoy of friends roll into the driveway behind us with pickups and trailers heavy with our possessions. Boxes in the house. Tools to the garage. Garden stuff to the shed and root cellar. Skis to the barn.

“Do you know you’ve got, like, ten friggin pairs of skis?” my friend Cameron is asking from somewhere behind his armload of poles and boots.

I’m aware of how many pairs we have, though I don’t really have a justification for it other than that we live for winter. That’s why we moved to this area, a well-known snowbelt that routinely closes schools and highways. Also, with that many skis you need a place that has a barn to hold them all. We needed a ski stable.

The skinny ones are for racing, their flashy blue and white zigzag graphics leave no doubt. They are iced lightning that must be operated only during daylight hours by those in bright shades of Spandex. I have a tendency to miss turns at the bottom of steep hills at excessive speeds when on them; and Spandex doesn’t soften the cold kiss of mature timber. These snow stallions are kept stabled in all but the finest conditions and fed only the purest waxes.

The workhorses are found deeper in the pile. They are wide, with steel edges and heavy three-pin bindings. Mated with equally heavy leather boots these planks pull loaded sleds and packs into the hills for camping. These are Rosignols, but they may as well be called Carhartt or Craftsman. They are rugged tools, but once camp is established they become powder queens, linking telemark turns through knee-deep lake effect pow pow. Kneeling, turning, kneeling, turning like a powder-powered piston through snow of a religious magnitude. These backcountry boards are winter worship at its best and our new home is only blocks from the cathedral.

Of course we have 10 pairs of skis. Everyone who lives in a place where snow flies from October through May should have a solid winter arsenal or they’ll go stir crazy watching the flakes fly.

Cameron is waving from the door of the shed and babbling incoherently. He’s holding a grey and weather-checked board with a familiar shape.

“Skis. You’ve got skis…there are skis in here!” he stammers, pointing up into the exposed rafters where he’s been stowing our stuff. But there, alongside our modern gear and next to an old white door with fraying paint, is a peculiar-looking board that matches the one in his hand.

They are flat on the bottom, tapered from thin at the tips and rising to level in the center. The front tips are pointed, but not curved up. These are handmade, but unfinished, wooden skis.

“I take it back, you’ve got eleven friggin pairs of skis!” Cam stammers.

But this was more than Pair Eleven. It was the passing of two wooden, Nordic batons, and it was the best housewarming gift imaginable.