5 Northern Michigan micro-adventures for outdoor winter fun
Updated Feb 02, 2021;
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TRAVERSE CITY, MI - While the pandemic may have temporarily shifted people away from guided trips and group events, it hasn’t changed people’s need to get outside and play. If anything, people are scouting out more places to have fun outdoors than ever before. Even this winter, and especially in Northern Michigan.
Grand Traverse Bike Tours created a new winter lineup to satisfy this trend. It’s offering 5 new micro-adventures. They feature everything from fat biking on one of the best biking trails Up North, and snowshoeing or hiking through the area’s picturesque vineyards. These mini-trips are paired with perks like warm lunches, reservations for outdoor igloos, and options to buy craft beer or wine.
Which lakes are most at-risk of losing their ice?
In the Great Lakes region, the deepest lakes are the most sensitive to ice loss. Shallow lakes will generally still freeze, with some exceptions in a really warm winter. But these large, deep lakes like Lake Superior, Lake Michigan and Lake Champlain are already experiencing ice-free years. That will get worse in the coming decades.
How did you arrive at that conclusion?
We used historical ice data to develop statistical models for the future for 1.35 million lakes.
One of my favorite places to study is Lake Suwa in Japan, where 15 generations of Shinto priests have maintained an ice record since 1443. That lake failed to freeze just three times in the first 250 years of its record. And since 1950, it has failed to freeze one out of every four years. Since 1990, it s only freezing twice a decade. And we projected that it may lose ice cover permanently by 2040.
9 & 10 News
January 29, 2021
He hopes to create thousands of new jobs by taking steps to increase renewable energy production.
Now, the Watershed Center Grand Traverse Bay says Northern Michigan may have an advantage when it comes time for those jobs to be filled.
The Watershed Center has worked with multiple contracting companies to install green infrastructure.
Program director, Sarah U’Ren say many of these companies are now preparing to start taking on more jobs that involve clean energy.
She says companies are already starting to see the benefit.
U’Ren says, “They got their feet wet so to speak doing these projects, they became better and better at them and I think that’s what’s going to happen with the clean energy. As it becomes more widely used people are going to become better at maintaining it building it and making it more energy efficient.”
Your source for NPR news, arts and culture. Interlochen Public Radio serves Grand Traverse, Petoskey, Ludington, Manistee and all of northwest Michigan.
Jan 25, 2021
These are stamp sands deposited along the Lake Superior shoreline on Dec. 9. The harbor is located at the bottom of the photo. (Neil Harri photo)
From the Michigan
Department of Natural Resources
GAY The Michigan Department of Natural Resources has provided an update from the Buffalo Reef Task Force on developments to save the natural underwater reef in Lake Superior’s Grand Traverse Bay, off the eastern side of the Keweenaw Peninsula.
Over the past roughly 100 years, historic copper mine tailings from the Wolverine and Mohawk mines called stamp sands were deposited at a milling site in the community of Gay, along Lake Superior.