In a typical winter, thousands of ice anglers take the hourlong drive north from Warroad through Canada to reach the storied walleye waters off the Northwest Angle.
But this is not a typical winter.
The Canadian border has been closed to all but essential travelfrom the U.S. since the start of the pandemic. The Angle’s entire economy is built on fishing tourism, and the tourists can’t use the regular route.
So the Angle — an isolated triangle of land at the northernmost tip of Minnesota, reachable by road only through Canada — got creative. Last summer, Gregg Hennum took anglers across Lake of the Woods in his boats.
And when the lake froze, Cale Alsleben and a bunch of resort-workers-turned-plow-drivers carved a 30-mile road across the ice, from just outside Warroad and due north to the Angle’s northern shore.
The ice road opened in January and is working pretty well so far. But driving it is a strange, and sometimes hair-raising, experience.
The tourism folks might have oversold it — just a bit.
The road is, surely, a herculean accomplishment for Alsleben and the resorts. And it seems to be bringing about 20 trucks a day to the Northwest Angle. That’s a small fraction of what they’d normally see, but it’s desperately needed. Fishing is the Angle’s only economy. Without the ice road, there’d be no money at all.
But it’s also not exactly a “road.” It’s a trail. Its very existence is as tenuous as Alsleben’s plow truck. One major snowfall could close the road for a week. A hard wind might fill it in with snow. An especially cold night might shift the three or four pressure ridges along the way. All the plank bridges would have to be adjusted, painstakingly, by Alsleben and the other plow drivers, before traffic could resume.
It’s also not exactly clear what would happen if something went wrong out there. If, say, a truck full of tourists got stuck on the ice. The local sheriff’s department is responsible for emergency calls on the lake, but vehicle recovery depends on ice conditions — which will become more and more of an issue as the season winds down.
Ice road condition updates posted on the tourism Facebook page are already warning guests not to drive the road at night. Fluctuating temperatures are threatening to shift the pressure ridges.
Even when everything is working perfectly, driving it can be a bit terrifying, crawling along at 25 mph, careful not to drift off course.
“It wouldn’t be my first choice,” said Fred Caribetta, the Angle’s mail carrier of 25 years.
While waiting for a hamburger at Jerry’s Bar in Angle Inlet, he admitted he’s wary of the ice road. His work takes him across small portions of the frozen lake to islands, and secluded places. He knows his ice, and he’s glad he’s an essential worker, allowed to cross the Canadian border — so he doesn’t have to use the ice road.
“I’ve been in enough situations I’d rather not repeat,” he said. “The lake changes overnight. One day you might have 10 inches of ice. The next you might have five.”
But, he said, most folks at the Angle are comfortable with the risks. Most anglers, too. And he’s glad they are. He says, the ice road has been a lifeline.
Before the ice road, Jerry’s was only open a couple days a week, struggling to get by. Now they’re back to full-time hours. It’s still not very busy. On the other side of the room, Cale Alsleben ate at a table with his parents. One angler sat alone in a corner, Caribetta at the bar. It’s just enough.
The resorts are doing some business too, which means the hundred or so people who live on the Angle are getting some work again. Not a lot of work, but some.
“If the amount of stuff they’re order from Amazon is any indication,” Caribetta said. “People up here are doing okay.”
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2021/02/23/carving-out-a-path-through-the-pandemic-and-the-snow-on-northwest-angles-ice-road
