Week 11: Stokely

Look at me...on fire with the posts today 😃!  

One of the topics I had planned to photograph was skiing.  I LOVE SKIING!!!  However, although I have coached kids in Jackrabbits and my job at Hiawatha this year was instructing with ski school, I am not an expert skier.  I have good technique (although I don't always use it 😆) and I have good endurance but I am not fast and I am known to be chicken on big downhills.  I can and will fall when snowplowing conditions aren't to my liking and I have mastered the art of ski-bumming (sitting on my skis to basically toboggan down a particularly alarming descent) in recent years.  One small but quite vertical hill on the Red Pine at Hiawatha has got into my head and I remove my skis automatically now on that one.  All this to say...I don't bring my camera skiing.  I would have brought it on the Pinder system at Hiawatha but the winter came and went (and came and went and came and went) so quickly, I missed my chance.

So what I have for you photographically in this topic is a photo that my mom took in 1978-ish.  We had just moved to the Sault and for Christmas that year, we all got cross-country skis and the outfits to go with them (made by mom, of course).  The skis were wooden and had to be tarred and waxed (with Jackrabbit Johannsen hot and cold waxes), the boots had that three-pin binding system and the outfits were corduroy.  I suspect younger readers understood none of what I just wrote 😁.

The Quinn family (minus mom) circa 1978/9.

I am so fortunate to live so close to two really great cross-country ski trail systems.  Hiawatha, which also has snowshoe and fat-bike trails, is a topic for another day.  This blog is dedicated to Stokely Creek Lodge.

Stokely is only a 25 minute drive from my place yet the vast majority of skiers there are from away, most of those being from the States.  I go there year-round as they welcome hikers and bikers on their trail systems off-season, and I hope to show you some photos from the other seasons in other posts.  For today, I have some rather lackluster shots from my overnight stay there in February and from a hike or two this past week.

If you look on Stokely's website, you will see the lodgings described as "rustic."  I don't know how old the buildings are but they were not built with great insulation.  The icicles are ubiquitous, on every building and during cold years, hanging down to the snowbanks.  This little set of ice is miniscule compared to other times.

In Stokely's heyday, this building was the day-skier's cabin.  You could purchase food and drink and warm up by the fire, before, after or in the middle of your ski day.  It's only open for special events nowadays.  We're welcome to call ahead and buy lunch up at the lodge nowadays but we just pack a lunch and either eat it on the trail or in the lodge or clubhouse afterwards. 

You have to ski, snowshoe or walk .5km from the parking lot to the lodge (up ahead on the right).  Very small in the upper left corner you can see the bottom of Home Run Hill.  It's a wild ride, about a kilometer long and it was closed due to not enough snow to cover the rocks for the first half of this very short season.  We hiked by it yesterday and it was completely bare.

King Mountain is famous around here.  There are snowshoe and ski trails that lead up to the hut where there is a stunning view of the valley and Lake Superior in the distance (I'll surely have a photo from there sometime this year).  Due to the up-ness, it is definitely a good workout getting to the hut but it is worth it!  Well, depending on conditions.  Last year, Colleen and I snowshoed up the steeper trail and the best thing you can say about that is that we didn't die.  The bullshit section (narrow switchback on the side of the cliff) was icy and slanted downwards due to the weird weather (recurring theme) and instead of it lasting about five minutes like usual, went on for at least 30 minutes.  Colleen has refused to tackle that route again and I haven't pushed the issue.  I should note that we got caught previously on the side of the cliff when an unexpected thunderstorm rolled in so maybe we just should stay away - there are other routes to take.

Every time I ski along Stokely Creek, I want to stop and take photographs.  I particularly like it when snow or ice is on the stones in the creek.  While snowshoeing, I was able to snap this photo.  Next year I am determined to capture the ice hats.

The world's boring-est photo but it's here for a reason.  Twenty-some years ago when I was a ski patrol, I was patrolling towards the back of a loppet.  It was a day with lots of fresh snow and great snowplowing conditions and the route took us around the perimeter of the trail system.  The Hakon Lien trail was the site of my Waterloo.  My ski tip got caught in a snowbank of freshly plowed snow (from the skiers previously snowplowing around that turn) and I wiped out, badly spraining my ankle.  I was down for the count.  Help was summoned and I was snow-machined back to the lodge.  The ankle was bad and recovery was slow but what I remember most about the incident was the embarrassment of arriving at the lodge, obviously having been rescued and wearing my ski patrol gear.  I have not been on that trail since but I had agreed to do it this year (sadly foiled by weather).  Colleen and I hiked that trail yesterday, determining which direction to ski it in next year (it's safer clockwise) and I am 98 percent certain, this is where I fell.

Stokely has over one hundred kilometers of ski trails and I don't know the area amount but it is big.  Even when there are lots of vehicles in the parking lot, you can ski for hours and not see another soul.  Due to the vast distances, there are outhouses throughout the trail system.  This is taken from inside the outhouse at the Hakon Lien hut.

Bye for now Stokely.