The Lake Superior ice magnet

Ice anglers test the limits of Lake Superior winter fishing of the Duluth shoreline.

An ice chunk about the size of Hennepin County floats between Wisconsin and Minnesota at the “head of the Great Lakes.”

It draws people to the Duluth shoreline like a magnet. Walkers, runners, families, teenagers and photographers like me were all over the Lakewalk Trail last Monday.

Some lakeside visitors are more daring than others.

Take the ice anglers for example. A small group of fishermen slid maybe 300 yards out from the safety of solid ground. Out at the edge, they drilled holes maybe 20 yards from a massive ice crush. As their hooks dangled in the chilly water below, frozen plates as big as white boards piled up nearby. Fresh caught salmon tastes good,  but I’m not so sure I want to risk an icy ride to the bottom of Lake Superior for dinner.

But God bless’em,  the fishing tents and parka-dressed anglers created intriguing dots on the landscape. The ice crush looked like a sea of marshmallows. And the blue sky seemed electric.

Great picture!

What looked like a day-care group stopped and watched as I stood with my camera on a rocky outcropping. The kids were intrigued by my overlook and drawn to the shoreline. We swapped places.

Soon there were six kids, two adults and a dog on the small cliff above the ice. They tossed stones toward the frozen lake, the dog barked and one of the girls shouted my way: “Are you taking pictures of us?”

Not really.

I was taking pictures of that big, frozen lake.

The next day the ice was gone. The wind blew it all to Wisconsin.

A group of children take in the view of a frozen Lake Superior on the Duluth Lakewalk trail.