As fires burn, Boundary Waters businesses confront lost peak season
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There's a giant map of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area behind the front desk at Ely Outfitting Company. It shows lakes and portages and campsites. Staff here have also drawn in all the roughly 17 different wildfires burning across the wilderness.
This week, owner Jason Zabokrtsky also put sticky notes showing where 75 of his customers were when forest officials closed the entire Boundary Waters on Tuesday. Yesterday, he was finally able to peel off that last sticky note. His last clients, the Hoopingarner family from Benson, Ill., had made it safely out.
"So we got everybody out of the wilderness, which is a real relief," Zabokrtsky said.
It’s been a trying several days for canoe outfitters like Zabokrtsky. On Monday, some of his customers were forced to leave six of his canoes behind to evacuate in front of the raging Camp Fire. They barely made it out of Pipestone Bay on Basswood Lake as fire closed in on both sides.
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But he hasn't had much time to think about the impacts of the fires and the Boundary Waters closure on his business. "Our sole focus was getting these people to safety."
But reality is starting to sink in. He holds up a folder full of bookings through the rest of the summer. "And now we're starting to process, you know, all of our cancellations,” he said.
Some are rescheduling trips, but dozens and dozens of customers have cancelled. And that's especially tough on a business that makes almost all its money in just a few summer months.
“I mean, I'll try to remain optimistic,” Zabokrtsky said. “But a closure that starts in the first half of July is realistically economically devastating for seasonal businesses if it goes on for an extended period of time.”
Farther down Ely's main drag, it's a similar story for Ginny Nelson at Spirit of the Wilderness Canoe Outfitters. She's worked 17 hour days helping to evacuate her customers. She's just now turning to the stack of cancellations.
"I have no idea what the actual monetary impact is or any of that because safety was our first concern. So I haven't even looked at that. Or actually I don't really want to, she added with a laugh.
Nelson employs 20 people. She's trying to keep them busy cleaning windows and doing the end-of-season work they usually do in the fall. Normally this time of year they'd be running around packing trips and driving canoeists to the water.
“This is our money-making season. We don't make money in the winter. This is our livelihood. This is our peak season, and we're hoping that maybe the Boundary Waters opens up soon, so we can get back at it."
That uncertainty is tough to navigate. The Forest Service has extended the wilderness closure through at least Saturday, and it’s likely it will last longer. Officials have said the fires are expected to burn and smolder into the fall.
Nelson noted that Ely is still open, and many resorts and other businesses are not in the evacuated area. However, air quality there is at a hazardous level due to wildfire smoke.
And though the city's big blueberry festival is still scheduled for later this month, some are beginning to wonder whether tourists will want to come if the air quality remains poor.
On the other side of the wilderness, Gunflint Lodge owner John Fredrikson said business is also down, although there are still people staying at the lodge and boating on lakes not in the wilderness.
"Some people really enjoy kind of seeing the activity here with what's going on and the sky changing colors and you know the kind of a unique historic situation that we have up here right now,” he said.
But he acknowledges air quality is also a concern, especially for people with preexisting health conditions. On Tuesday the air quality in northeast Minnesota was some of the worst in the entire country. That’s raised concerns about the health of not just tourists, but of workers in the region.
Evacuation zones are also constantly fluctuating. Just last night the Forest Service closed the campground at the end of the Gunflint Trail.
But outfitters and others are holding out hope, that rains will come, the wilderness will reopen, and tourists will return. That’s what happened five years ago, recalled Zabokrtsky.
“The last time we had a complete closure, it reopened in a couple weeks, which shocked everybody, and we were back at it full speed ahead, and actually we were in good spirits and had a fine season,” he said. “So who knows?”
