Superior Surf
Video by Ali Rogers of Prana Lens. Narration by Rob Bell.
Video by Ali Rogers of Prana Lens. Narration by Rob Bell.
About five minutes after this footage was taken I wandered too far onto an escarpment of ice over Lake Superior. Marching out there, intending to be careful and to stay a couple feet from the edge, I said, “Let’s go risk our lives!”
This one was shot by Jacob Selander on Feb. 13 along the North Shore.
Since the previous ice-stacking video posted on PDD is nearing one-million views, here are two more. These were shot by Ryan Tischer.
Video by Dawn LaPointe of Radiant Spirit Gallery.
Video shot by Levi Drevlow on a -18 degree day. Choose an audio soundtrack below and enjoy. From indoors.
Gary Parsons of The Next Bite, along with Josh Teigen and Chris Meyer, troll Lake Superior’s South Shore for walleyes.
Depth: 30 feet. This is the red buoy in the outer harbor within sight of the Vietnam Memorial and Uncle Harvey’s Mausoleum. Thanks to my canoe-based support team, Jeff Greensmith and Sean MacManus, who towed me out there on my floaty raft. At the 1:18 mark you can see the concrete block the buoy is tethered to but the shot is brief as I didn’t want to dally.
Underwater footage of Uncle Harvey’s Mausoleum off the Duluth Lakewalk in relatively clear conditions. First I videoed the collapsed column in 9 feet of water, Then because visibility was so good, I swam around the base of the building structure too. That is 16 feet deep according to a depth chart I saw once.
Ruins of the column that collapsed this winter at “Uncle Harvey’s Mausoleum” off the Duluth Lakewalk. Water is really murky as its proximity to the shipping lanes stirs up a lot of silt this time of year. I intend to keep trying to get clearer shots but this is all I could manage during this initial foray. Water depth: 9 feet. Basically what you’re seeing here is a base of concrete sprouting metal bars and telephone-pole-like wooden posts that in some cases are splintered or splayed. The tops of some posts were sheared off and smoothed by ice sheet movement and lie just below the surface. The concrete top of the column lies on its side at the bottom, along with eroded steel jacketing that sheathed the base.
I was very cautious during these dives as the danger of getting snagged or nicked in the gloom was fearful to contemplate. I heard nearby swimmers claim a member of their party had scraped himself on the posts while swimming. Not to be a bringdown but this area has to be considered a hazard to swimmers and boaters alike. It is also the most interesting thing to look at in Lake Superior right now.
I was freediving Duluth’s amazing rock beach one afternoon, and started finding pot-smoking paraphernalia in a few feet of water just off shore. I realized I was reassembling some poor stoner’s fully stocked stash tray which he/she must have set too close to the waves. Within a relatively small radius I found pieces of two glass pipes (one largely intact), pokie tool, rolling tray, grinder, cigarette roller, and a broken glass jar. Archeological evidence of a beach culture of leisure.
A brief encounter with a Northern Pike in several feet of water. It looks injured as if by a propeller across its back.
