A look at the new backyard smokehouse that i built out of tongue n'groove pine just before Christmas to handle 50 Lake Superior Cisco. The big Chief wasn't going to hack it and my usual Christmas fish smoking accomplice had moved to Newfoundland. So i was left with few options. This option turned out amazing.

Smoked cisco after 8hrs in the house.

I'll say it once.  It's been a cold winter so far.  Just the way we like it of course.

A nice buck that i came across late in December

Jigging rainbows

 Back to logging some good winter miles, mostly via the daily commute.  Nothing like the feeling of  -35C to make you want to pedal hard.

Drippin some wax.  As a friend said today.  "Those trails aren't going to ski themselves Eric".

Add caption

Get out and enjoy winter friends.

peace
e

photo's by
eric berglund

Some shots from the fall. 

Get outside.

peace
e

photo's by. e

Stopped to snap a couple of the boys surfing a fun wave, en-route to Ashland, WI last week for work.  What a gorgeous afternoon.  Downright balmy for January.  Not the case this week however.  Back to more normal January weather for northwestern Ontario.

peace and happy new year all.

photo by 

eric berglund

In pursuit of early steel.

Otherworldly moss. Almost like sea grass moving with ocean currents.

One foot and then another. Great 1.5 hour trail run this morning.



peace
e


photo's by eric berglund

Had fun yankin lake whitefish with dad on sunday...what a great day. unreal weather and enough fish to keep the smoker blazin, plus several meals of baked whitefish.

Tools


been keying in on skiing, being healthy and all the other good things life provides, which unfortunately has put the sitting at the computer in the evenings lower down on the list of priorities. so be it. keep getting out there and pushin it folks.

peace
e


photo's by e.

That time of year again. The Spring issue SBC Surf arrived today, with a cover shot by Jeremy Koreski of Nico Manos going left in NS; edging on that fresh spring feel...at least in terms of the colours.

Inside, there's a familiar shot of our man Liam Cook "in the wild heart of the Canadian shield" ripping on Lake Superior on a blustery fall day.

Anyways, check out the issue when you have a chance. As usual, there's a lot of goodness inside.

peace
e


photo of Liam By eric berglund

Some from the fall, on a sunny fridged january afternoon.



peace
e

photo by eric berglund

More from yesterday. This time some shore pound. Pretty tough to convey the vertical height at this point, so you'll have to take my word when i say it was at least 10' and maybe more like 15'. Either way the Lake was showing some fury.


peace
e

photo by eric berglund

Stand out spots were just too burly, no way to paddle out into 20'+ swell on Lake Superior in 40knot winds. No channel, no current and a 10 second period. Still, some sizable sets were found even under more sheltered conditions. What a day!!

Liam sizing one up and charging it.



For the record from Weather Underground.com --

"Yesterday's 28.20" (955 mb) low pressure reading in Minnesota breaks not only the 28.28" (958 mb) previous "USA-interior-of-the-continent-record" from Cleveland, Ohio during the Great Ohio Storm of Jan. 26, 1978 (a lower reading in Canada during this event bottomed out at an amazing 28.05"/950 mb), but also the lowest pressure ever measured anywhere in the continental United States aside from the Atlantic Coast. The modern Pacific Coast record is 28.40" (962mb) at Quillayute, Washington on Dec. 1, 1987. An older reading, taken on a ship offshore from the mouth of the Umpqua River in Oregon during the famous "Storm King" event on January 9, 1880, is tied with yesterday's 28.20" (955 mb.)

So, the famed storm that sank the ore carrier Edmund Fitzgerald in 1974, , was weaker than the current storm."

So wild.
So much respect.

peace
e

From this point, straight line it's 235km of open water to the south. Some cruising around google earth however reveals some fetches of double the distance; also evident when looking at the rugged coastline from the water.

Glassy morning, while slipping out of the Slate Islands, Lake Superior.


peace
e

photos by eric berglund

Lots of point and shoot these days for some reason; but so be it.

Off to the Sleeping Giant Loppet early Saturday morning. Warm and spring like, kind of bizarre. Pretty sure the temperature at the start line was hovering around 0C just before 10AM and well over 10C by mid day. Lot's of kids, families and smiling faces. Fast skis for the first bit, but progressively softening snow over the course of the race, made for a bit of slog by the end. Not as fast going as last year, that's for sure. Definitely felt the burn of not having the most restful sleep the night before. Oh, well. Dig deep, ski hard. Work all those muscles, bones and tendons to the fullest and feel good.









The magical white crow. Not that you can tell that it's body is white in this photo, but it is. He or she is nesting in the neighborhood, as N saw it on Friday and we saw it again today on a morning walk. The goal now is to sleuth it out and capture it with the big lens.



peace
e

photo's by eric berglund

Great sheets of black ice out there on the bay.




These days: Family time, tons of good skiing, warm winter weather and Olympic maddness.

peace
e

photo by: eric berglund

Foggy damp weekend on the northshore of Lake Superior



And tons of fun at a friends wedding and camping out with little Oskar man, Nance and Lutsen.

photos by: eric berglund

peace
e

Plenty goin on, for the exception of surf that is...which is a pretty normal thing for this time of year. Windy as stink out there though, but mostly from the west and the north...no good. Meanwhile, been hit with some projectile baby excrement, some Tour de France-itis and scoopin the mantra of "run to surf" from Nova Scotia's Ku Yah! who continues to provide some of the interwebs more entertaining and progressive literary musings...at least a few folks think so.

Couple captures here from the other evening.



Oh yeah, and stay tuned, cause in the very near future there'll be a new and exciting surf publication hittin the wires. We'll keep you posted.

peace
photos by: eric berglund

photographs by:
eric berglund

dog named Lutsen

We call him 'the dude', 'Lutter', 'dude','little brown dog', 'boy'and'Luty', but his name is Lutsen. A boykin spaniel from Greenbrier, Arkansas and at one year he's an intelligent, rambunctious, affectionate, hardcore, spring in every step (unless your prying him from the bed), friendly, outgoing, laze around in the morning and at night kinda dog. Know's how to sit, retrieve, wait, go for a ski, come when called (most of the time), spot birds, chase birds, ride in the canoe, hunt dust in the house, stay, swim, hang out while fishin, entertain himself, entertain us, roll over, shake a paw, ring a bell to go outside, and sit on your lap while you try to read your favorite book, among other things that i might have forgotten. Happy b-day little dude.

Peter Crooks, master trail groomer in these parts was right at ~1 A.M. on Saturday morning when he left his message from the cabin of the piston bully, on the "snow phone", reporting that the trail for the loppet looked like a carpet and would be "fast" come 9:30 AM; the start of the 32nd Sleeping Giant Loppet, (formerly the Sibley Tour). Stupid fast actually. Mostly sunny, -2C, spring like, more like cordouroy and down the line laser fast. Being 5 and a half months pregnant Nance cruised her way through the 10km event rather than the 20km or say the 50km and enjoyed her ski, the family atmosphere and the morning. After geeking on wax for the last few days, i was pretty confident in my skis and had a fantastically fun 50km boot, coming in a full hour faster than last year. I was pretty pumped....anyways..needless to say 755 skiers, both locals and from abroad, couldn't have asked for a better day. See you out there next year ombres.
For good measure and to ensure full exhaustion, we made sure to get out for a ski this morning and hit up some tobogganing with the kiddos this afternoon.

Scenes from the weekend.

Piston Bully layin down a snowy carpet.


About to go.


Post race enthusiasm.



tired


peace

photos by: eric berglund (except the last, in which case it was Nance)

Coprinus comatus,

The shaggy ink cap,
lawyer's wig
or
shaggy mane
Eatem while they're young.
(before the gills start to turn black)

Shot this one last fall while out on the river.

photo by: eric berglund

dudes. holy good skiing the the last couple of days. i get so stoked hearing guys at the nordic center who have obviously skied here for many years and who still comment on how lucky we are to live in such a beautiful place with such fantastic trails right out our back door. Ok..maybe not litterly out our back door...but pretty dam close...regardless, its just nice to see that people don't take it totally for granted.

Cold and windy...Feb-19th, 2009


Interesting note on weather and ice: last year we had our "last" winter surf on Feb. 21st before the lake froze up for a month...this year we have been iced in and surfless since the beginning of January...ouch....but tons of good neige.
peace.

photo by: eric berglund

Sweet wild edibles!! Morchella elata, morel mushrooms of the northern woods. Came upon these guys this morning after first spotting some false morels. All within about a 100 meters of a 400+ lbs black bear chowing down on a moose carcass. Wild times in wild places. Cooked these sweeties up with a little butter and shared them with Nance as an appetizer before dinner....zing!



photo By: Eric Berglund