- [Presenter] Coming up on "Great Lakes Now."

A skier's paradise on the shores of Lake Superior.

- It's the only real mountain in the Midwest, so it skis like more of a rocky mountain.

Bring your equipment, come with friends, and you're gonna have a great time.

- [Presenter] The centuries old practice of sauna.

- Everyone is so welcoming, and the feeling of like this bliss, and you're like, okay, life is good.

- [Presenter] And news from around the lakes.

This program is brought to you by the Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Richard C. Devereaux Foundation for Energy and Environmental Programs at DPTV, Polk Family Fund, DTE Foundation, and contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

- Hi, I'm Anna Sysling.

Welcome to "Great Lakes Now," They call themselves Powder Hounds, skiers and snowboarders who flock to Mount Bohemia on the Keweenaw Peninsula after snowstorms for some of the finest expert level powder skiing in America.

Ian Outside columnist, Ian Solomon, is not quite expert level, but we set him up there anyway to see if he could handle the challenge.

(snow crunching) - [Ian] This is what Mount Bohemia is all about.

It's the white fluffy stuff called powder.

That's Steve Rowe, a self-professed powder hound, expert skier, guide, and instructor.

He knows Mount Bohemia better than anyone.

- [Steve] Run it as far as you can.

- [Ian] And this is me.

If you can't tell, I'm not an expert snowboarder.

In fact, the first time I set foot on a snowboard was 48 hours ago.

I am way up here in the Keweenaw Peninsula, a curved piece of land that juts out into Lake Superior for Michigan's upper peninsula.

Inside the lodge where it's warm, Steve tells me the lake plays a key role in producing the massive amounts of snow Mount Bohemia gets each winter.

- Most of the snow that falls in winter, especially on the Keweenaw, is lake effect snow.

You've got cold air coming from Canada generally, it's well below zero.

You've got Lake Superior, largest freshwater lake in the world by surface, which is all that counts.

The surface, not volume.

- [Ian] Steve says relatively warm moisture from the lake combined with that super cold air from Canada collides with the elevated terrain of the Keweenaw peninsula, producing something called orographic lifting.

- When the air rises and it's cold and juicy like that, lake effect snow falls, and more than half of our snow falls as lake effect.

- [Ian] And that produces the light fluffy snowflakes known as powder that skiers love.

In fact, the New York Times recently called Mount Bohemia a Midwestern paradise for skiers who dare.

Wait, does that say no beginners allowed?

Lonnie Glieberman opened Mount Bohemia in 2000.

- Good, I'll show you around a little bit.

- Please.

- So first off, what makes it unique is that it's the only real mountain in the Midwest.

When I say that it's a prehistoric volcano, so it skis like more of a rocky mountain.

- Looking around this place, at all the yurts that are set up at the base for housing skiers and snowboarders, complete with the restaurant, bar, and hot tub, Mount Bohemia definitely has a certain vibe to it.

(people shouting) So what advice would you give to anybody that's never been here before but wants to make the trek up?

- Just bring your equipment, come with friends, and you're gonna have a great time because really if you're an intermediate or above, you can handle this.

- [Ian] It's back to the slopes.

Let's see if I can handle this.

That's me in the bright yellow jacket, with Steve on his skis and my snowboard instructor, Peter Doyle.

As you can see, just buckling into my snowboard is challenging.

I can only imagine what lies ahead for me.

But guys, after a couple of false starts, I'm finally getting the hang of this.

I'm actually doing it, until.

- [Steve] Ooh.

- [Ian] Wipe out.

- [Steve] Not bad.

- Feel like I can keep the balance.

See if it's turning.

- [Steve] A turn heel side.

- [Ian] I'm quickly discovering that falling is just part of the learning process.

- [Steve] Keep it going, keep it going.

Turn left.

Turn left.

- [Ian] And I'm doing a lot of falling.

And remember guys, we haven't even gotten on the chairlift yet.

I must admit, I'm feeling a little nervous about this, but I'm getting really good advice.

- [Peter] The name of the game is to get, you know, away from the chairlift when you get off of it, and then to not eat it too hard on the way down.

- [Steve] Keep her coming.

There you go.

Awesome.

- All right guys, we have made it to the top of the mountain.

How many trails are available just from this one ski lift?

- [Steve] There's a hundred plus names.

You know, you can go in any direction 360 degrees.

We have lines dropping off this summit point.

- So which one are you taking me, a beginner that should not be here in the first place?

- Ghost Trail.

- Ghost Trail.

- Ghost Trail.

Yep.

- Okay, hopefully I'm not one by the end.

- And it's the easiest one on the mountain.

It used to be a service road for a fire tower that was on the summit.

The longest run on the hill over a mile.

- I am not supposed to be here.

They are kind enough to keep me alive.

Do not come here if you do not know what you're doing.

All right, I think we're not gonna get sued now, so.

- Perfect.

Perfect.

- We're good to go.

- [Peter] So now we're looking down the top of Ghost Trail here.

This little natural half pipe into the fog.

And so the goal isn't straight down this mountain, it's gonna be side, side, side.

So I'll kind of demonstrate a little bit more for you here.

- [Ian] Peter makes it look so easy.

Now it's my turn to show off.

I am determined to make this work.

- So just keep your weight back when you're holding on.

Don't lean over.

- [Skier] Snow board problem.

- [Peter] Control speed.

- Despite my frequent falls, I do feel as if I'm getting the hang of this sort of.

But this place is definitely challenging.

Like I've said many times before, this mountain is not for beginners.

It's actually mostly double black diamond trails like this one right here, the outer limit.

I will not be going anywhere near there.

This is as close as I'm getting.

They've been taking me out on the ghost trail, and I've survived so far so I'm excited to keep going.

- [Peter] Okay, lower down.

Oh, you're doing all right.

- [Ian] Whoa.

Get that on camera?

- [Steve] Oh yeah.

That was a wild ride a bit there, huh?

- [Ian] Yeah.

- [Peter] So that's what we call catching an edge.

- Catching an edge.

- Yep.

Move on your heel edge, and all of a sudden that tow edge found the snow and now you're on the tumble.

- [Steve] Yeah.

So this'll be the next challenge 'cause it gets a little steeper.

- [Ian] It gets steeper?

- [Steve] But Ian, I can see that you've got enough innate recovery moves where with time on snow, you're gonna pick it up.

- Yeah, thanks 'cause I couldn't rent these boots.

I had to buy 'em, so I was like, I'm a snowboarder now.

- [Steve] Yeah, you absolutely are.

- [Ian] We are in the final stretch of this mile long ghost trail.

We can see base camp below.

- [Peter] There you go.

Oh yeah.

Doing it like a pro.

There you go.

Oh, sorry.

Don't take them off.

You're allowed.

That was 900 feet of vertical.

- Let's do it.

With "Great Lakes Now", I'm Ian Outside.

(chuckles) - [Steve] Good.

That's some good stuff to finish on, my friend.

- Yeah, I'm proud of today, man.

- [Videographer] Dude, I'm proud of you.

- Not bad for a beginner.

To watch Ian try ice climbing, e-foiling, and more, visit greatlakesnow.org.

There's an old tradition with deep roots in the Great Lakes region that's experiencing something of a renaissance.

It's sauna or sauna, the old Finnish practice of bathing in dry heat, sometimes followed by a plunge into icy water.

Over the past several years, a host of businesses have sprouted up in Minnesota and beyond, offering sauna experiences on hotel rooftops and in mobile trailers, and building saunas in homes and backyards.

Reporter Dan Crocker went to find out why sauna is gaining so much steam.

- [Dan] For Glenn Auerbach, a good sauna starts with good wood.

- This is red oak, and red oak is a great burning wood and stuff, but, you know, you wanna increase the surface area.

- [Dan] He splits it into smaller pieces, then he carries it into the sauna he built in his backyard in south Minneapolis attached to his garage.

He stuffs the wood into a small stove.

- [Glenn] So birch bark is nature's gasoline.

I like to put some birch along the sides and the tops.

- [Dan] He crumples some newspaper, lights it, and then loads and kindle it.

- So now really, we're in a great spot.

So I can close this down, and we can do other things for like, 30, 45 minutes, and then it's sauna time.

- [Dan] Glenn Auerbach is something of a sauna evangelist.

He got hooked while hitchhiking in Europe with a friend in the 1980s.

He still remembers his first sauna after getting picked up by a woman during a rainstorm.

- We were literally chilled to the bone, and I remember the feeling about being warmed, you know, really from the inside, you know, that deep radiant heat, that lompomasa of mass that penetrates within you.

- [Dan] He came back to the US and moved to Minnesota.

He built his first sauna on a lake in the north woods, then he built one in his urban backyard.

This was years before the sauna trend had taken hold.

- [Glenn] All the neighbors made fun of me, but now they all want a seat on the bench, and that's just kind of a testament to how this practice has become very commonplace.

- [Dan] To share his love of all things sauna, Auerbach started a website called Sauna Times.

Then about a decade ago, he published a guidebook on how to build a backyard sauna.

At first, his customers were mainly in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

A lot of people of Finnish descent live in those states near Lake Superior.

But since COVID, he says he ships them everywhere.

- I mean, people are purchasing the book like you're saying, from all over the world, but in crazy places like Texas, and Arkansas, and North Carolina, you know?

- [Dan] Auerbach says he started to see interest surge in sauna five to 10 years ago after several studies were published showing health benefits from regular sauna use, including a reduction in fatal heart disease, high blood pressure, and dementia.

- But to me it just feels great.

You know, I don't need the prescriptive health benefits, and 38%, you know, decrease and this and that, you know, to know it's good for me.

I just dig it.

- [Dan] After chatting outside for a while where it's a chilly 30 degrees, Glenn invites me inside to sit on his sauna bench, which now feels pleasantly hot.

- The elements of sauna are pretty basic.

You know, the heart of the sauna is the stove, the kuias is the Finnish word.

So, you know, most often wood-fired in Minnesota.

- [Dan] He says ventilation is also key, good air movement, and the last ingredient is steam.

- So when we throw water and we make steam, steam called loyly.

It's like this Finnish thing.

It's very spiritual.

It's an essence of sauna.

Like, good sauna is good steam.

(water sizzles) - Those rocks are so hot.

It just evaporates almost instantly, huh?

- That's right.

Yeah, turning water to steam right there, and it carries the heat, right?

- Glenn, thank you for inviting me into your backyard sauna.

- It's great to have you, brother.

I mean, I love sharing good heat and good sauna with good people.

- From our box house, I head over to the other side of Minneapolis to Theodore Wirth Park, where a sauna he helped design is parked outside of cross country ski chalet.

It's called the 612 Sauna Society.

It's a cooperatively run mobile public sauna built out of an ice fishing trailer.

Anyone can pay 40 bucks for an hour and a half long session.

Members get reduced rates.

Jessica Nelson-Roehl joined the society with her husband six years ago, shortly after she took her first ever sauna on a cold December night.

- Everyone was so welcoming, and it was just like the feeling of like, this bliss and like, you know, like when you get a massage and afterwards you just melt and you're like, okay, life is good.

(laughs) And that's kind of, that's what I felt after the first sauna.

- [Dan] Co-op members say they're drawn to the communal nature of sitting together in a sauna, and cooling off outside.

Kirk Jensen is a co-op board member who also volunteers to host at the sauna.

He says it can also be a quiet experience.

- For a hardcore Fin, sauna's like church.

You know, you get in there, you shut up, it's your time for reflection, it's that centering yourself period.

It's not meant to be this big social thing.

I tend to lean the other way so I tend to have music going and, you know, there's a lot of conversations and very animated, interactive kind of stuff.

You know, and there's room for everybody within that environment.

- [Dan] Nearly 300 members have joined the Sauna Cooperative since it formed in 2016, including Sam Teisberg and Katie Kaufmann.

- All of like, the guest artists.

- I think sauna for me, it gives me an opportunity to do something where I'm actually choosing to not think about anything else, and it's a really active choice to ignore other things in my life, and just focus and work.

- For me, it's just been about like, getting some warmth in the cold Minnesota winter, and like, coming into a community space when you are very isolated in the winter time.

- [Dan] Since the 612 Sauna Society started, other sauna experiences have sprouted around the Twin Cities and beyond.

Some so-called saunapreneurs offer guided saunas.

Others drop off rental saunas on trailers in people's driveways.

Still others emphasize plunging into cold water after leaving a hot sauna.

- I think we're just on the leading edge of this.

I mean, it's burgeoning certainly, but I think there's more to go yet.

You know, and we've got plenty of room for the community to expand.

You know, we could be like Starbucks and have a sauna on every corner probably, but we're nowhere near market saturation, I don't think.

- [Dan] About two hours to the north in Duluth, Minnesota is one of the largest new saunapreneurs in the region.

Cedar and Stone offers sauna experiences on Lake Superior.

They also design and build saunas for customers all around the country.

Since launching in early 2020, they've grown to more than 40 employees.

- Our business is about stress relief.

We're a stress relief company that happens to do that through this centuries-old practice of sauna.

- [Dan] CEO and founder, Justin Juntenen, says projects range from 50 to a $100,000 for custom home saunas.

Business owners are also adding them to yoga studios, gyms, and wellness facilities.

Juntenen says the health benefits of sauna that his grandparents preached have now been validated by science.

- That kind of research has now been picked up by every podcast, every outlet and saying, wait a minute, this thing is really good for us, and it's good for our hearts, and it's good for our joints, it's good for our immune systems, it's good for our sleep, and all of those things I think the world wants right now.

The world is sort of trying to say, how do we live more intentional, more healthy lives in the face of a more and more digitized, fast-paced world?

- One of Cedar and Stone's most recent and most ambitious projects was to build a floating sauna on an old barge.

It's been moored in a slip on Lake Superior next to a hotel since late November.

People can book guided public or private sessions.

A main attraction is the cold plunge area where people can dunk in frigid Lake Superior barely above freezing after soaking in a 200 degree sauna.

I had to give it a try.

Sauna guide, Zane Brosowske, walked me through the process.

- Here at Cedar and Stone, we embrace what's called the thermic cycle, which is hot, cold, rest, rehydrate, and repeat, and so this is of course the hot part.

- [Dan] After about 15 minutes, I told Zane I was ready.

I pulled on some wool socks and ventured out into the cold.

- I always remind folks that that cold water takes your breath away, right?

And so I'm taking a few deep breaths as I'm coming down here, get yourself oxygenated, and then when you hop in there, it's easy to wanna tense up, but just breathe through it, and relax and enjoy it.

- [Dan] All right, I'm gonna try, and I'm gonna do this now before I get any colder.

- [Zane] Yeah, catch your breath.

Deep breaths.

Find your calm.

Just be present.

(Dan speaks foreign language) - [Zane] Nice and easy getting out.

- Whoo!

I feel better now.

You feel good when you get in, and then when you get in there, it's like you said, you just wanna get out and you have to really settle into that.

- Yeah, yeah.

- But it's amazing.

It just makes you feel alive, doesn't it?

- [Zane] Absolutely.

- And it's just crazy seeing all the ice around that I was just at this waddle.

- For more about Great Lakes culture and history, visit greatlakesnow.org.

And now it's time for The Catch, where we bring you news stories and events from around the Great Lakes.

In the early 2010s, there was a wave of proposals for offshore wind farms in the Great Lakes.

So why haven't any been built?

Nicole Pollack explored that question for Inside Climate News.

- There was a lot of excitement about offshore wind in the Great Lakes region a decade or so ago.

There was this sense at the time that the Great Lakes could be the next big thing for wind power if they could just harness it.

- [Anna] The Great Lakes are prime real estate for offshore wind farms because of their proximity to population centers, and the strength and consistency of the wind.

But just getting the permits for development can be a difficult task.

- The permitting process for an offshore wind project is really complicated.

A lot of states don't really even know what the process would be because they've never had to do it.

- [Anna] Additionally, most wind technology has been developed with ocean salt water in mind, not the fresh water of the Great Lakes, which freezes more easily.

- One of the biggest problems was that a lot of these developers kind of got ahead of themselves.

They had these good ideas, and then they realized that the technology wasn't necessarily there yet.

- [Anna] Many developers also faced unexpected pushback from the communities where they planned to build.

- Some companies that proposed offshore wind projects came into these communities really excited and ambitious, and just started talking about all the turbines they were gonna build, and communities kind of got scared and got a little bit turned off on the idea of offshore wind kind of before it could ever take hold.

- [Anna] Some opponents to the development cited concerns about the effects of turbines on water quality and wildlife.

Others were worried that turbines off the shore of their homes would impact their views and property values.

As developments faced local pushback, governments were less willing to shell out the cash required to build them.

- These projects were expensive, and even little pilot projects cost millions of dollars.

Developers really needed support from states to be able to build even those first few turbines.

But when the public was upset, states didn't want to give them the money.

- [Anna] Is there any hope for offshore wind in the Great Lakes?

Nicole says maybe, but local support will be key to success.

- I think the biggest thing I've learned is that for it to succeed, it will almost certainly take a lot of community involvement, and be something where residents participate in the process from the start, and have a say in what offshore wind looks like in their community.

- [Anna] Between 2017 and 2022, Wisconsin lost 10% of its farms and 30% of its dairy farms.

Robert D'Andrea covered the story for Wisconsin Public Radio.

- In 2017, Wisconsin had 64,793 farms.

In 2022, that number was down to 58,521.

So a total of 6,272 farms lost over those five years.

There were 6,200 dairy farms in Wisconsin in 2022, down from above 9,000 in 2017.

- [Anna] The data comes from the USDA's 2022 Census of Agriculture, a nationwide count of farms and farmers that takes place every five years.

In addition to counting the number of farms, the census also collects information about farm size and economic data.

- So the average farm in Wisconsin in 2022 was 236 acres, which is the largest it's been in more than two decades.

Wisconsin's agricultural products had a market value of nearly $16.7 billion in 2022, ranking 10th in the nation, and that's up from 11.4 billion in 2017.

What we're seeing here is fewer farms, but the remaining farms are much larger.

They have a lot more land, they have more animals, and they're producing more products.

- [Anna] Robert says these changes mirror trends seen in other industries.

- These are broader changes in the economy where we see a greater consolidation in many industries.

They've seen an increase in prices for all commodities in increasing the cost of production, and there are going to be some folks who just don't want to continue on with a family farm.

running a dairy farm as a 24/7 job.

- [Anna] Agriculture is a big part of many Great Lakes economies.

Every state in the region saw a decrease in farms between 2017 and 2022, though not all at the same rate as Wisconsin.

- The health of farms is very much tied to the health of rural communities.

$16.7 billion of market value makes Wisconsin's agricultural sector very important.

It's also just a matter of America's dairy land.

The production of dairy is obviously very important to Wisconsin's cultural identity.

- [Anna] Alison Vilag is a bird conservationist and migration counter based in Northern Michigan.

In that capacity, she's helped document a loss of birds that scientists have called staggering.

- You know, we live in a time where birds in general aren't doing well, and I do want to draw attention to that.

It's estimated that in the last half century, this continent alone has lost a third of its birds.

And a lot of the times, the birds that I'm keeping track of like, my number, it's hard to feel joyful about them.

Cranes are not one of those examples at all.

When the waterbird count started at Whitefish Point in 1983, they would get over that six week period, maybe like a hundred cranes over the whole period.

On the peak crane migration day at Whitefish Point, since I've started doing the count, we've gotten like, five, six, maybe even 7,000 in an eight hour period, and so that's something that's wonderful that they've come back and we can see them at that magnitude.

I don't think it's possible to see that many cranes just following out their natural instincts, and not be moved.

- Thanks for watching.

For the full interview with Alison Vilag, or for more about any of our stories, visit greatlakesnow.org.

When you get there, you can follow us on social media, or subscribe to our newsletter to get updates about our work.

See you out on the lakes.

(upbeat music) - [Presenter] This program is brought to you by the Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Richard C. Devereaux Foundation for Energy and Environmental Programs at DPTV, Polk Family Fund, DTE Foundation, and contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.