March 6-9, 2014 Winter Camping on Lake Superior

With all the media attention focused on the main land apostle island ice caves I thought I better go and check it out for myself. Instead of visiting the main land sea caves I set my sights on the sea caves of Sand Island. I convinced a friend of mine to join me, and we snowshoed over frozen Lake Superior out to Sand Island. Traversing over frozen Lake Superior is always a high risk activity. Ice conditions can change quickly, and falling through the ice is always a possibility. I pulled a sled that weighed over 150 pounds. It was very slow going and it took us seven hours to get to our destination.

Here is a view from inside one of the ice caves.

We set up base camp under a ice cave. Below the snow was frozen lake superior. We camped, slept, and ate on the ice. During the day we would explore the ice caves and take pictures. It was very eerie not seeing anybody for days.

Another view from inside of the ice caves.

This perspective made me feel like I was looking out through the mouth of a shark.

I found this large block of ice.

In the movie Star Wars, when they are going into hyper-space, these icicles remind me of that.

Our cozy little camp. At night the ice would crack and pop beneath our tent, a sound we never got used to. Each morning I feared we were going to wake up on an iceberg floating in Lake Superior.

On our last night we built a small fire in one of the ice caves out of some drift wood we had found.

This is the Sand Island Lighthouse. Very few people ever get to see this lighthouse in the winter.

Another view of the Sand Island Lighthouse.

This is my friend watching the sun set over frozen Lake Superior. I imagine this is what Antarctica looks like.