Folks sometimes wonder how one survives in the frozen Northland. It's actually quite easy and fun given one stays warm. Here are three great activities with photographs which I enjoyed during the past seven days:

• John Beargrease Sled Dog Race
• Hiking over the Lake Superior Ice to the Apostle Islands Sea Caves
• Competing in the City of the Lakes Loppet (42 kilometer Nordic ski race)

Winter is fun; one just needs to embrace it!

A final comment … if you are a City of the Lakes Loppet competitor or spectator, please let me know if you find the GoPro photos valuable. It is hard and time consuming work to organize and edit the pictures. I am providing them for free viewing and download. Please comment on this blog or send me a note: RichardHoeg{at}GMail.Com. Thanks.

Here is one representative photo from each event, follow by a link to all the photos:

John Beargrease Sled Dog Race: See All Photos

Apostle Island Sea Caves: See All Photos

City of the Lakes Loppet: See All GoPro Photos

Everyone needs to constantly improve their skills. If you never challenge yourself to push beyond your personal comfort zone, it is guaranteed you will perform at best average in life.

With respect to photography, I have started a year long project named 365 Days of Birds. Via this effort I often give myself photo assignments which force me to experiment and improve. Two recent assignments have been: Frozen Harbor and First Bird of the Day. Here is a photo I took on Day #3 of the project, a Snowy Owl at sunset (low light conditions are difficult). Learn more via my project site at 365DaysOfBirds.Com.

The publishing of my first book has been timed to correspond with my selection as a finalist in the annual Lake Superior Photo Contest! Only 37 photos out of 1,450 entered were selected to received this honor. My award winning photo is displayed below.

Lake Superior Magazine is the leading publication which focuses upon the natural surroundings and the people who live near the largest freshwater lake in the world. The magazine has thousands of subscribers from all over the world. Essentially, think Arizona Highways except for Lake Superior! Better yet, the magazine has now asked me to start submitting photographs to them on a freelance basis … for moola!

However, the focus of this post is my new eBook. The format of my eBook is Adobe PDF which will allow viewing on any device (tablet, pc, etc). While there is no charge for this eBook, if you discover uses for my book beyond your personal enjoyment, please inform me of that use, grant me full attribution and link back to this site. Thank you.

• Download eBook: Amity! A Northland Winter Tour. (free / pdf file)

For the techies / photographers who are curious on how this book was created, I chose to utilize the online service, Blurb. One first locally installs their free book creation software on your personal computer. When you have finished creating a book, you upload the data to Blurb. For a nominal fee, you may obtain a professional quality pdf copy of your book. While I could have used Adobe InDesign, their product is much more complex and costly.

Finally, here is my Lake Superior Photo Magazine Contest Finalist: "I see you!"

The news media has been all excited about our current cold snap. Duluth as one of the coldest, most northern cities, has received lots of attention. The last few mornings the temperature at 7 am has been around -25F (not including windchill). Guess what, life goes on! I was even out cross-country skiing yesterday afternoon when the temperature rose to -7F. 

During this cold snap, I am often out just before dawn, and then early morning with my camera. This photograph which I took three mornings epitomizes the cold … it is the Canadian Laker, Baie Comeau, arriving in the sea smoke at the entrance to the Duluth harbor. Click upon the image to view at full size and resolution.

It's a tradition here in the Northland that when the snows fly and the ice thickens, it is time to Nordic ski up some of the rivers that empty into Lake Superior. This afternoon, I had a great time cross-country skiing up the Knife River and one of its tributaries. It is truly a unique experience to hear the sounds of rapids bubbling underneath your ski boot, or to ski down a small waterfall.

One word of warning. It is important to know your streams and rivers. Current can be dangerous, but with proper knowledge of a river system, white water skiing allows the individual to reach back-country not very accessable during the rest of the year.

Here are two photos from today's ski. Click upon any image to view at full size and resolution.

A Knife River Tributary … getting narrower

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The Knife River … looking upstream