We darted across the frozen lake wearing wool socks and swimsuits, the icy snow crunching beneath our feet.
Under the pitch-black night sky, steam radiated off our bodies like translucent capes in the below-freezing air after sitting in the 200-degree sauna. A lantern on the ground marked the ominous black hole carved in the ice. One by one, my three friends fearlessly leapt into the frigid water, exhaling in shock before dashing up the wooden ladder back to the Finnish sauna.
Rinse and repeat.
"It's magical," I said as we sat breathlessly in the dim light from a single kerosene lamp hanging in the window.
Camp du Nord outside Ely, Minn., is a quiet escape to a winter wonderland on the edge of the wilderness.
The northern Minnesota YMCA facility may be best known for its popular summer camps that draw hundreds of families for a packed schedule of activities, meals and presentations after selling out in a December lottery each year. In a sign of just how popular the family camps are, YMCA of the Greater Twin Cities, which owns Camp du Nord, just bought two lake resorts in nearby Babbitt to open Camp Northern Lights, its eighth overnight camp.
But camps like du Nord are also increasingly catering more to adults, women's groups and couples in the spring, winter and fall, offering a calmer retreat to a rental cabin that allows you to explore on your own.
"It has just been getting busier and busier," said Emily Weise, who grew up attending the camp and now runs its fall, winter and spring programs. "It becomes more of a focus every year. It's like our worst-kept secret. ... It's just an amazing time to be up there."
During our weekend at Camp du Nord, we swapped crowds and traffic for the peaceful solitude of the North Woods, slowing down to watch the crackle of the fire over glasses of wine, to snowshoe among towering red pines and, of course, to steam in a sauna.
In the 1930s, three schoolteachers from the Iron Range started the resort on a slice of land on Burntside Lake, giving it the French name for "camp of the North," in honor of the voyageurs who trekked and canoed through the region during the fur trade. Finnish carpenters, most of whom didn't know English, built the first log building in 1933 to serve as their bunkhouse while they built the resort's other structures. Just steps from the lakeshore, that first log cabin was later converted to the sauna.
The YMCA bought the camp in 1960 for $50,000. Since then, the site near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness has drawn generations of visitors, expanding along the way by adding cabins _ including year-round lodging in three different "villages" along the lake.
In the winter, most of the camp's 29 cabins are open. The camp offers free use of cross-country skis and snowshoes and has groomed trails and a tubing hill.
