A brief return of a rare winter phenomenon and how changing conditions and crowds reshaped the way I photographed one of Lake Superior’s most fleeting landscapes.
After more than a decade of being closed, the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore sea caves froze enough for them to open to winter travelers on February 17, 2026. Winds from the Mardi Gras Blizzard broke up the ice by the 19th, forcing the National Park Service to close the caves likely for the rest of the season.
I wanted to take advantage of the rare opportunity, so I made my way to the caves, leaving Grand Marais at about 4:30 a.m. and spending a little over two hours waiting in line for the bus from Cornucopia to Meyers Beach, where the hike to the caves begins. This was my second time visiting the caves in winter. This time involved a lot of waiting.
After I got back and read my social media posts from the Apostles, I had to laugh when a friend commented, “Man, I miss the old days when we had to use our best judgment on whether we should or should not bring a PFD along for the hike. No open/close, no parking or shuttle issues, you get the idea.”
That made me think back to the first time I visited in winter. It was in 2014, on the first day the caves opened. There were very few people on the ice. I parked at Meyers Beach in the early afternoon after stopping at the Village Inn for a bowl of their famous fish chowder, the best on Lake Superior. I didn’t reach the first ice cave until about 1 p.m. There wasn’t a rush, because it hadn’t yet exploded in everyone’s imagination. Hardly anyone was there.
That year, it was easy to get a photo without anyone in it. But I’ve always liked the one below with a fat bike in the shot. After that first day, the Park Service clarified their rules and fat bikes were no longer allowed on the ice, because the ice was considered a park trail or something along those lines.
The best sport action I saw in the ice caves this year was an ice skater.
My first visit to the caves wasn’t on foot. It was by sea kayak, in 2009. I was paddling from Grand Marais, Minnesota, to Houghton–Hancock, Michigan, as part of a bigger trip. But I had injured my shoulder teaching rolling a week before I left. By the time I reached Houghton, I had given myself tendinitis from changing my paddle stroke and from not having enough strength in my shoulder; so much so that I couldn’t hold a rudder stroke on a two-foot following wave.
Photography wasn’t my goal on that trip, but I did make this photo. I was the only person along the entire shoreline on May 8 when I paddled through.
This year, there were so many people that it was difficult to make a photograph without someone in the frame. I waited about fifteen minutes to make a photo from the back of one cave, and then decided it wasn’t worth the wait anymore.
Instead, on this trip I focused on the ice formations.
It wasn’t the outcome I had envisioned when I was planning the visit, but the reality on the ground forced me to rethink my approach.
In the past, I had my pick of scenes and could photograph whatever I wanted with little to no waiting. This time, I wasn’t going to get what I wanted.
As an illustration, the next photo is one of my favorite images from 2014. The photo after that is the same spot this year.
Shifting my mindset, from what I wanted to what I was realistically going to get, took a little while. But eventually I adjusted, and came away with a few photographs I really like.
The hardest part was that just as I felt like I was finally settling into a rhythm, it was getting late in the day and the buses were scheduled to stop running. I had to hustle back to make sure I got a ride to the parking lot.
I had worked out a plan to return if the caves survived. I was going to come back on my cross-country skis, ski in the ditch along the highway, and then head out to the caves. That would have allowed me to stay on the ice until sunset without worrying about the bus schedule. And by then, I knew exactly how I wanted to photograph the formations, so it would have been a very productive visit.
It wasn’t meant to be.
Perhaps I need to find sandstone caves on land that form interesting ice shapes in a similar way to the Apostle Islands.
Now, I wait and hope that I get another chance to photograph the caves in winter in my lifetime.
Thanks for reading today’s essay. I hope you enjoyed it. I’ll see you again in two weeks.
I’ve had a few people reach out about registration for my 2027 workshops. If that’s something you’re interested in, I plan on finalizing the schedule soon and opening registration in April. There will be an early registration period for alumni and paid subscribers, followed by general registration. It’ll be similar to previous years.
The parting photo is from 2014.
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