Best of winter
Here are dozens of ways to savor the chilly season.
© Beth Gauper
There's a reason why winter is the favorite season of many photographers — it's gorgeous.
You've seen this region's icicle-draped sea caves, volcanic Great Lakes waves and dancing northern lights on social media. Now get out there and enjoy the scenery yourselves.
Snowshoe up frozen river canyons, barrel through the woods behind a team of huskies and go to bock festivals at breweries. Learn to ice fish, track wolves and look for bald eagles.
Or be like the Finns, Danes and Norwegians, who regularly land on top of the World Happiness Report. In winter, they enjoy hygge — the cozy well-being felt by lighting candles, sitting in front of crackling fires and having warm drinks with friends. Try that yourselves, or go to the Hygge Festival in Grand Marais in February.
Winter is fun! Here are our picks for the best things to do outdoors in 2024.
And if you're worried about the cold, here's our guide to staying warm. There's no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes.
Playing in the snow
Candlelight skiing and snowshoeing
There's nothing more magical than making your way through a forest filled with light, or more thrilling than starting down a shadowy hill, hoping your skis stay in the groomed tracks (they always do).
Among the best candle- or lantern-light events: the ones in Minnesota's Itasca State Park Jan. 13 and Feb. 10 and, in Wisconsin, on the Red Cedar State Trail Jan. 26.
The biggest candlelight party is Book Across the Bay from Ashland, Wis., Feb. 17. Anyone can take part in this popular ski or snowshoe trek across flat Chequamegon Bay, on a 10-kilometer route lined by 1,000 ice luminaries and a bonfire every kilometer.
© Torsten Muller
The route is a loop leading back to Ashland, where a bonfire, chili feed and live music follow.
You also can make your own course with friends; see How to make ice luminaries.
For extra illumination, go out during a full moon, Jan. 25, Feb. 24 and March 25 in 2024.
Nothing says "north woods" more than a team of huskies pulling a sled. It's pretty much the most fun you can have in winter, especially if you drive the sled instead of sitting in the basket.
It's not cheap, so save up for a special occasion. Look for mushing outfits in Ely, along Minnesota's North Shore and across the north woods. Reserve in advance.
© Beth Gauper
On snowshoes, you can really go places.
On Minnesota's North Shore of Lake Superior, the slot canyons of the Onion River near Tofte and Devil Track near Grand Marais, inaccessible when the water is flowing, are fun to explore.
Near Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, on the U.P., the Eben ice caves also are a popular destination.
Looking for northern lights
Along Lake Superior, the aurora borealis has been showing up with amazing regularity.
Marquette photographer Shawn Malone of Lake Superior Photo offers tips for finding and photographing them, and smartphone apps alert you to the best opportunities in real time.
If you join the Great Lakes Aurora Hunters Facebook page, you'll get alerts.
With their multiple lanes, conveyor lifts and snow-making, today's tubing hills are nothing like the ones your grandma had.
The great thing about tubing is that anyone can do it. There's no learning curve, it's not expensive and the only gear required is warm clothing. You'll find them everywhere, in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois and Michigan.
Watching and photographing birds
© Torsten Muller
Snowy owl irruptions once came only every few years, but the photogenic owls now arrive every year. Boreal and great gray owls also are regular visitors around the western Great Lakes.
Not far from Duluth, the Sax-Zim Bog is one of the best places to find owls of all kinds. There's a small welcome center staffed by volunteers in winter, who also offer field trips.
Bald eagles aren't as cute as huskies, but they're a thrill to watch. You'll find them picking off fish at the base of dams, at the mouths of rivers and at the many eagle-watching festivals around the region.
And then you have trumpeter swans, who are nearly as noisy as huskies before a run and really easy to spot if you go to a certain spot in the Minnesota town of Monticello, where a power plant warms the Mississippi River an hour northwest of the Twin Cities.
© Lauren Gagner
The swans think it's a spa. They arrive from the north in late November and stay through February.
Exploring an icescape
Learn how to ice climb
Experts show novices the ropes at clinics during the Sandstone Ice Festival in eastern Minnesota on Jan. 12-14, the Duluth Ice & Mixed Fest on Feb. 2-3 in Duluth, and the Michigan Ice Fest on Feb. 7-11 near Munising, Mich. Participants can borrow gear.
You can also book a private ice-climbing adventure with Michigan Ice Fest guides in the Upper Peninsula.
People start calling the hot line of Wisconsin's Apostle Islands National Lakeshore in January, hoping to hear the magic words: "Conditions do allow access" to the mainland sea caves near Cornucopia.
It's a mile's walk or snowshoe over frozen Lake Superior to the ice caves. But visitors are rewarded by a constantly shifting spectacle of ice stalactites and columns, often tinted blue, green and pink, and caves dripping with icicles.
Dress warmly and hope for cheek-tingling temperatures; that's when the formations are most beautiful.
In recent years, the lake ice hasn't frozen enough to allow a safe walk to the caves, but you can walk above them on the two-mile, clifftop Lakeshore Trail.
Or, visit the inland Eben Ice Caves near Munising, Mich., on the Upper Peninsula.
Enchanted forests, waterfalls and volcanoes
On the shores of the western Great Lakes, waterfalls freeze, wind-borne spray coats shrubs and branches along the shore and glistening formations appear along rivers.
Many of the best places to see spectacular ice is on Minnesota's North Shore and Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore on Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
© Beth Gauper
Ice castles in southern Wisconsin and the Twin Cities
In the western Twin Cities suburb Maple Grove, visit a professionally built ice castle. Tickets are cheapest when bought online.
Just north of the Illinois border in Lake Geneva, there's a Winter Realm playground with an ice volcano, tubing, igloos, tunnels, ice slides and sleigh rides.
Fun festivals and spectator events
On frozen Lake Harriet in Minneapolis, artists build two dozen whimsical Art Shanties, each with a different theme, then invite the public to visit and partake in games and art activities. It will be weekends from Jan. 20 to Feb. 11.
The Lake Harriet Kite Festival also will be on the lake Jan. 27.
Another fun thing to do in Minneapolis: the goofy Art Sled Rally in Powderhorn Park Jan. 27.
© Capital Brewing
Out in the countryside, especially Wisconsin, the cold goes to people's heads and they start doing strange things, like tossing turkeys, flinging fruitcakes and pushing decorated porta-potties.
It adds a little levity to a long winter. More conventional winter festivals are fun, too, with ice-sculpting contests, hot-air balloon launches and sleigh rides.
Bockfests in New Ulm and Middleton
If you're tired of winter, here's where you can usher it out on a Mardi Gras-style tide of beer. In the Madison suburb of Middleton, at the Bockfest Feb. 24 at Capital Brewery, the brewmaster tosses smoked chub off the roof (there's that weird Wisconsin throwing thing again).
In the German bastion of New Ulm, Minn., Schell's Brewery hosts a bock hunt March 2 in the woods adjoining its hillside brewery.
Both festivals have become so popular they limit tickets, so plan ahead.
And there's a craft-beer festival nearly every weekend in winter.
City weekends
Okay, so you're a sophisticate who doesn't really want to stand around watching people heave hams. Head for a big city — Chicago, Madison, Milwaukee, the Twin Cities — for that unbeatable shopping-eating-nightlife combo.
Hotel rates drop in the winter, and but that's also the best season for going to the orchestra, ballet, theater or opera.
© Beth Gauper
In Minneapolis, the Hennepin Theater District brings in big-name performers and Broadway musicals. And the big City of Lakes Loppet Ski Festival, featuring the very popular Luminary Loppet, is Feb. 3-4.
Ski jumping tournaments
If you can't afford to travel to the Olympics, you can watch world-class ski jumping not far from home.
In Fox River Grove, Ill., the Norge Ski Club has a 70-meter hill and holds a tournament Jan. 27-28. This Chicago suburb has supplied several members of the U.S. Olympic team.
Southeast of La Crosse, the Norwegians of Westby, Wis., celebrates the 101st anniversay of its annual tournament Feb. 2-3, on an Olympic-size jump as high as a 41-story skyscraper.
For more, see A jumpin' joint.
In Iron Mountain, Mich., the Kiwanis Ski Club-sponsored tournament Feb. 23-25 is a Continental Cup event and attracts jumpers from around the world.
© Beth Gauper
Best places to find snow
You can sign up to get the weekly snow reports from Minnesota and Wisconsin, but the same places get the best snow year after year.
The most reliable snow for both Nordic and alpine skiers is the Ironwood area of Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
Indianhead and Blackjack resorts now are one, Snowriver Mountain Resort. Along with Big Powderhorn and Whitecap, just across the border in Wisconsin, they provide non-stop snow for alpine skiers.
At two cross-country systems — ABR and Wolverine — nordic skiers are awash in snow through April Fool's Day.
In a bad snow year, you'll still be able to ski here.
And for the best snowshoeing in the region, head for nearby Porcupine Mountains State Park.
© Beth Gauper
Nicolet National Forest is vast, remote, barely populated and, in winter, walloped by snow. Snowmobilers, skiers and snowshoers alike find plenty of room to do their thing.
Eagle River makes a good base; beginning skiers will like the Anvil Lake Trail east of town, where chickadees eat out of skiers' hands.
Near Phelps, Afterglow Resort is a playground for families, who get towed up a big tubing hill by snowmobile.
And the area still has some classic old lodges.
This pocket of the north woods, along a 57-mile highway that dead-ends near the Canadian border and adjoins the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, has the best snow in Minnesota and 200 kilometers of groomed trails to go with it.
© Cascade Lodge
High season is January and February, but the skiing is excellent in December and March, and rates are lower at the lodges then.
Learning from the Scandinavians
Despite the long, dark days in the north, Scandinavians don't dread winter — they welcome it.
They get to ski, for one thing, but they also light a lot of candles, sit in front of crackling fires, read books and down warm drinks with friends.
It's all about a sense of well-being and coziness. In Danish, it's called hygge. In Norwegian, it's koselig.
Try it at home, or get a head start in Grand Marais, at the northeast tip of Minnesota. It holds a Hygge Festival Feb. 3-14, with Scandinavian menus, a full-moon reading, a cabin concert and lodging specials. There's also a fireplace tour through February and free community sauna sessions.