By — Lorna Baldwin Lorna Baldwin Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/ice-caves-open-public-lake-superior Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Ice caves open to the public on Lake Superior Nation Feb 25, 2015 6:40 PM EDT Grab your ice cleats and snow poles this weekend for a 1.1 mile trek over icy Lake Superior to witness the stunning, naturally-formed ice caves at Apostle Island National Lakeshore in Wisconsin. Park rangers determined today that the lake ice en route to the caves is thick and sturdy enough to handle visitors starting Saturday. Even so, rangers are warning it will be a treacherous walk in windy conditions. Visitors in 2014 making the trek across Lake Superior to get to the ice caves. Photo by Flickr user pixn8tr. The ice caves aren’t accessible every year, but this will mark the second year in a row the ice cover of Lake Superior is strong enough to take the pedestrian traffic. In the two months the caves were open last year, about 138,000 people made the journey. Extreme winter cold has covered 95.5 percent of Lake Superior with ice as of Feb. 23, 2015. The record ice cover for Lake Superior was in 1996 at 100 percent. Lake Superior almost completely frozen in February 2015. Satellite image from NOAA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. By — Lorna Baldwin Lorna Baldwin Lorna Baldwin is an Emmy and Peabody award winning producer at the PBS NewsHour. In her two decades at the NewsHour, Baldwin has crisscrossed the US reporting on issues ranging from the water crisis in Flint, Michigan to tsunami preparedness in the Pacific Northwest to the politics of poverty on the campaign trail in North Carolina. Farther afield, Baldwin reported on the problem of sea turtle nest poaching in Costa Rica, the distinctive architecture of Rotterdam, the Netherlands and world renowned landscape artist, Piet Oudolf. @lornabaldwin
Grab your ice cleats and snow poles this weekend for a 1.1 mile trek over icy Lake Superior to witness the stunning, naturally-formed ice caves at Apostle Island National Lakeshore in Wisconsin. Park rangers determined today that the lake ice en route to the caves is thick and sturdy enough to handle visitors starting Saturday. Even so, rangers are warning it will be a treacherous walk in windy conditions. Visitors in 2014 making the trek across Lake Superior to get to the ice caves. Photo by Flickr user pixn8tr. The ice caves aren’t accessible every year, but this will mark the second year in a row the ice cover of Lake Superior is strong enough to take the pedestrian traffic. In the two months the caves were open last year, about 138,000 people made the journey. Extreme winter cold has covered 95.5 percent of Lake Superior with ice as of Feb. 23, 2015. The record ice cover for Lake Superior was in 1996 at 100 percent. Lake Superior almost completely frozen in February 2015. Satellite image from NOAA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.