Outdoors Posts

Northern Lights at Caribou Lake

The aurora was amazing last night! I stitched stills from last night into a video. Taken at Caribou Lake, north of Duluth.

Ice Skating Brighton Beach

Duluth Winter Enduro Video

Jeff Wolf’s view of last weekend’s Spirit Mountain Bike Enduro Race. Music by Red Hot Rebellion.

Carved Stone Project Placement Experiment

Stoneworker Sean MacManus and I hatched a plan to use his Celtic stonework pieces to fashion an underwater stone garden, geocache, and/or orienteering course. This video is footage of my experiment to test the feasibility of lashing the stones around the base of a boulder. I had two of the stones, each identical with backing mounts affixed with mortar, and I had two ropes. I found this project much more difficult than I imagined, and it failed as a proof of concept as the mortar weakened and would not hold the ropes. This was in addition to simply being deucedly difficult to accomplish even in just a few feet of water. The shot of the stones towards the end by the green leaf is after the mortar failure when I decided to abandon the attempt. I was beat and so left one the stones overnight. The final shot is me retrieving it. After this, I experimented with trying to wedge the stones in place but that didn’t work either. The entire project (still evolving towards this summer) generated a lot of footage of me swimming around enigmatically with these stones, which has already been released here.

Crazy Pine Siskins

We have a gazillion pine siskins at our bird feeders right now. The feeders have to be filled twice a day to keep up with these ravenous little guys. Does anyone know what the story is? We have had siskins before but never so many at one time. Undoubtedly our seeds are tasty, but …

The Mitten

Another cold day today, more crazy cold coming this weekend. Be careful out there, dress appropriately.

Moving the Infinity Stone

Raising the Celtic Mandala Stone

Diving with the Triquetra Stone

Summer 2014 placement experiment with MacManus Stoneworks’ triquetra stone, towards an eventual permanent placement in an underwater orienteering course or geocache concept. More deets in summer 2015.

Underwater Carved Stone Portraits

Collaborating with Sean MacManus of MacManus Stoneworks, our plan was to create an underwater geocache or orienteering course of his carved stones in Lake Superior. The summer of 2014 saw me performing initial placement experiments. This failed to yield any permanent way to affix the stones underwater, but it did generate several video portraits of the stones in situ. A follow-up video will detail the work I did to try and place these stones underwater. Summer of 2015 will see more progress and additional ideas. Meanwhile, enjoy~

Ice Climbing at Casket Quarry in West Duluth

A group from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Outdoor Recreation Living and Learning Community take on Casket Quarry on Jan. 31. Video by Grant Sachs.

Underwater Lester Creek and What I Found There

July 2014.

Video Archive: How to Build an Igloo

Here’s one from the early days of vlogging. Starfire and V-Nick show how to build an igloo in this grainy PDD video from 2005.

Ruffed grouse release 2/5/15

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Several days ago, one of our great local conservation officers brought in a ruffed grouse with a head injury to Wildwoods. The grouse has made a full recovery, so today, Sarah and Trudy released her back into the wild. The grouse exploded from the transport kennel and quickly disappeared into the woods.

John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon 2015 Video

The PDD drone, piloted by Cory Fechner (liftoffaerials.com) was at the start of the 2015 John Beargrease Sled Dog marathon yesterday to shoot aerial footage. There were other drones at the starting line so we ventured out into the woods to capture the mushers a quarter-mile into the race.

Music: “Guit. Ditty” by Hattie Peterson from Twenty3 Years Into 4teen Songs.