Manitoba and North Dakota — Sandra Herber Photography

Before I even left on this trip to Manitoba, I had some doubts. Lakes and rivers hadn’t completely frozen (see screen grab from IG of someone going through Lake Winnipeg just a week before I got there) and there was little snow in Manitoba. Since my two goals for this trip were to continue working on my ice fishing hut series and to photograph some minimalist snowy images, I was getting a little worried. I scoured the snow cover maps and saw there was more snow across the border in North Dakota than there was in Manitoba, so I did a bit of scouting online, picked some areas I thought would be good and amended my plans: now I would spend the first part of the trip in North Dakota, hopefully finding some snowy minimalism and the second part of the trip in Manitoba where I hoped the extra week and some frigid temperatures would mean the lakes were frozen and the ice fishing huts would be out.

The first full day of the trip I headed south towards North Dakota. That first day was, well, challenging. It was truly, bitterly cold with a biting wind (-25C [-13F] said the car thermometer, and I bet the windchill was below -30C). There’s was very little snow in Manitoba, but I scouted a few locations I hope I could shoot later if the snow arrived. I nearly got stuck in probably the only patch of snow in the whole province - a long (maybe 200 metres) patch of deep, packed snow on a back road. I had a rather unfriendly grilling by the guards at the tiny border crossing (they get an average of only 100 cars and only 10 trucks a month, so I guess they have lots of time to give each and every visitor a thorough going over). But I made it to Devils Lake (yes, no apostrophe), North Dakota, US of A at the end of a long day of driving.

The first day of a trip like this is always hard and I tried to remind myself of that the first evening in Devils Lake. It’s such an adjustment from my usual, predictable life. It takes a few days, on a trip like this, to adjust to the intensity – the cold (or heat), eating little or at odd times, driving long distances, pushing mysefl to see as much as I can when the light and the conditions are good and to scout during those times when they’re not. More often than not, it’s sort of miserable. There’s often a time on the first day I want to just quit, and go home. Sit on the couch at home and read a good book. And the first day of this trip was all of that in spades. I told myself, just keep going, get a good night’s sleep and if you still feel this way tomorrow, you can turn around. But, of course, I felt better the next day and on I went.

The day I flew into Winnipeg. It was cold, but that made me hopeful that the lakes and rivers would soon freeze and ice fishing huts would be out when I returned from North Dakota.

On my first full day in North Dakota (after that good night’s sleep) I photographed west of Devils Lake, visiting places I’d scouted online – old churches, schools and, my favourite, grain elevators. Not all of them worked out, but having destinations like these gives me a reason to be off the main roads, roaming around the back country and likely (hopefully) stumbling across something interesting. My favourite part of the day was meeting Shelly and her dog, Goldie, out for a walk in the -16C weather. They live in the almost-ghost town of Brinsmade, North Dakota, which has a beautiful old grain elevator that I was photographing when Shelly walked up to ask if I was OK. Only 20 people still live in Brinsmade and most of them make their living in Devils Lake. Goldie was the friendliest dog I’ve met in a while and she trotted along with us, begging for a scratch on the head, as Shelly pointed things out around the town that she thought I’d like to photograph. She told me she had moved there from Phoenix years ago; she just wanted to have a little house of her own in a quiet town. I feel like there had to be more to the story, but who am I to pry? Oh, and I passed through the geographic center of North America, so all in all, it was a decent day, but there wasn’t much snow around Devils Lake and no fishing huts out on the ice, so I decided I’d head further south the next day.

The grain elevator in the almost-ghost town of Brinsmade, North Dakota, population 20.

The next day was pretty uneventful. With bright sunshine and clear blue skies, it was mostly a day for scouting potential locations to shoot the following day and a travel day as I headed for southern North Dakota (I ended up staying in Valley City, west of Fargo). I scouted this beautiful Lutheran Church - called the Bethel Norwegian church - which is now abandoned and boarded up. The sign near it reads, “Bethel Hauges Norsk E.V. Luth. Kirke, 1915”.

The following day was a long, exhausting, but incredibly productive day! I spent over 10 hours in the car, driving over 600 kms around southern North Dakota photographing old grain elevators (including one made of brick; I’ve never seen that before), crumbling churches and tiny, isolated abandoned schools. Even though the temps were in the warmer -9C to -6C range, there was a fierce wind which made things challenging, and it was a lot of driving for one day, but it was the most productive day of the trip up to that point. You just need a day like that to lift your spirits and help you to keep going.

The funniest part of the day happened as I crested a small hillock and saw a dead fish right in front of me on the road. A dead fish? On the road? In the middle of the fields? Then I saw the bucket, the skimmer, the stopped truck and two men running towards me. I screeched to a halt before running anything over and said (somewhat stupidly), as I got out of the car, “Is this all your stuff? You’ve been fishing?” and one of the guys responded, “We’ve been trying to”. Apparently they had been ice fishing rather unsuccessfully (only caught one fish) and as they were driving home, all their gear spilled out the back of their truck. As I crested the hill they were running back to rescue their one fish and all their gear. The one guy said to me, “That’s why when I saw you coming I thought ‘I hope she don’t run over the fish’.” : )

A blustery and chilly day in Danzig, North Dakota.

The next day was the most productive of the trip for minimalist winter scenes. I had overcast skies all day and I was in an area (between Fargo and Grand Forks) that had more snow than I’d seen on the trip so far. Often, when I stop to take a picture, a truck (it’s usually a truck) will slow down to check if I’m alright. This happened four times that day. The last time, as I was photographing some electrical poles (as I said, it was a great day for minimalism), a woman stopped to check that I was OK. I said I was, that I was just taking a photograph. She looked a bit puzzled. Then a truck going in the other direction stopped to check that both of us were OK. “She’s just taking a picture,” the lady said to the other driver (a neighbour, it turned out). He looked puzzled, too, but then gamely said, “Well, it’s a beautiful place; that’s why we live here, isn’t it?” I agree. It is a beautiful place.

Back roads, North Dakota. Finally, more snow!

The next day, a Saturday, was a quiet day. I left early from Grand Forks to shoot, but as soon as the sun rose, the light became too harsh for me. I drove around for a couple of hours, hoping that clouds would roll in, but they didn’t, so I turned back to Grand Forks. As soon as I did, I realized how tired I was. I hadn’t been sleeping well and I’d been pushing myself for the previous few days - it’s a lot of driving for one person. So, a day off was in order. When I planned the trip, I made it longer than previous trips I’d taken out west. I thought the only way I’d get the conditions I wanted would be to go for longer, knowing there would be down days of sunshine. This was one of them and I took advantage to read and nap and ended up at a sports bar in the afternoon to grab a late lunch. The night before I’d had dinner at Sickie’s (a North Dakota institution) - meals in North Dakota were a lot of fun.

The next day I left North Dakota and headed back to Canada to start the second part of the trip – photographing ice fishing huts in Manitoba. I was excited to continue the series I’d begun on a trip to Lake Winnipeg in December, 2018. There was lots of driving (surprise, surprise) and not great light, but I saw some cool grain elevators and scouted the locations of ice fishing huts (and lake entrances) along the western shore of Lake Winnipeg towards the end of the day. I was happy to see ice fishing huts out on the lake, knowing that the ice had been a bit soft in the weeks before.

While photographing on and around Lake Winnipeg, I stayed in Gimli on the western shore. After long days in the car, it was great to be able to walk out the front door of the hotel, down the street about 200 metres and right onto the ice to photograph those huts. Many of the shots I published last year were shot right in Gimli harbour, walking distance from shore. My first morning in Gimli, I was out on the ice before the sun rose. I didn’t get the overcast conditions I was hoping for, but at least I wandered around, and got the lay of the land and saw what huts were out on the ice. I saw a lot of the same huts I shot last year, but I noticed they were closer together and closer to shore than in December, 2018. As I walked past one of the huts, I heard a “Hey!”. I turned around to find a guy stepping out of his ice shack. “Are you cold? You can come in and warm up if you want,” he said. Despite it being -15C (windchill of -20C) I was pretty toasty warm in all my layers, but I did chat to him for a while. He told me he worked in town and could see his hut from there and that most days he’d look longingly out the window, wishing he was out on the ice. The fish weren’t biting that morning, he said, but it was better than a day at work. He told me that after Christmas, he was going to bring a big pump out, and pump some water out of the lake onto the ice to make a rink for the kids. I spent the rest of the day scouting locations up the western shore of the lake and getting organized for my outing with the ice fishing guide. The forecast didn’t look great - mostly sunny. The guide suggested we shoot when the clouds rolled in and fish when it got sunny so I ran off to buy a fishing license to be prepared for whatever was to come.

My day out with Dan Kiazyk of Cat Eye Outfitter was such a fun day! Last year a friend took me out onto the ice to shoot ice fishing huts, but this year I hired an ice fishing guide to take me out. Dan seemed puzzled that fishing wasn’t my top priority, but he was game to take me out to photograph the huts (or permies, as they are called in Manitoba). The forecasts for the day looked bad – mostly sunny. I checked at least four forecasts – all the same. I thought it wasn’t fair to cancel on him the day before, so I figured I’d get some advice about driving on the ice from Dan and then when the clouds roledl in, I’ll drive myself onto the ice. It’ll be an adventure, I thought! Sure enough, the day dawned with barely a cloud in the sky. But then… about an hour in, it clouded over and we shot dozens of huts on four separate locations along the lake. I just love those fishing huts - so many of them have such wonderful charm and personality. When we ran out of huts to shoot, Dan drilled some holes, set up a tent, I tried my hand at ice fishing for the first time and I caught a fish! All in all, it was a great day with fun new experiences and, hopefully, lots of great fishing hut images!

The sound of the ice (well, my crampons, really) and a view of the thickness of it and an ice fishing hut. My apologies for the shaky camera work.

The trip was now starting to wind down. The next day I spent about three hours driving the area west and north of Gimli, looking for photo ops, but there really was very little snow. I stopped to fill up a big bottle of water at the artesian well and then spent a couple of lovely hours in the afternoon out on the lake in Gimli Harbour, photographing ice fishing huts. It was a very comfortable -6C with not a breath of wind. People were out on the lake at their huts socializing and their kids were out skating around between huts and playing games of pick-up hockey.

The next day I started off shooting the huts in Gimli harbour. Even though I got out there before dawn, hoping to be able to photograph the huts without too many people/trucks around, there were already trucks out there before dawn. I guess the early fisherman gets the fish. : ) I wandered around shooting for a very pleasant couple of hours and then thought I’d attempt to drive onto the ice at the only spot where I hadn’t photographed the huts yet – Riverton. When I went to load up the car, I had to scrape off a little layer of ice. My car was sitting near the vent for the laundry at the hotel, but I started to wonder if maybe, outside of town, maybe near the Crown Royal distillery, there might be hoar frost. So, off I went. And, indeed there was, at least in some pockets. I spent most of the rest of the day looking for lovely frosty scenes to shoot, grabbed a lunch in town (fish and chips, again!) and finished the day back on the ice at Gimli.

The next day I headed home. This trip was a challenging adventure. All my landscape photographer friends will know the struggle – you push yourself to try to be in the right place, ready for the great shots taken in good conditions and then, once you’ve done everything you can, you just have to take what you get and do the best you can. Trips like this can be hard. There are long drives, sometimes drab, depressing hotel rooms, endless second-guessing, the stress of dealing with everything on your own and long, lonely days but, in the end these are the kinds of trips I always seem compelled to do and I ended up with some images I love, so it was all worth it in the end.

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