I think that’s part of the reason why emotions run so deep at the state tournament.  The guys celebrating state championship victories are realizing the fruits of a dedication that affected them every moment of their lives for the preceding four months and often for much of the year.  The fans of wrestling are just as dedicated. With the advent of Trackwrestling, everyone from the most avid of fans to those just getting to know the sport can find out all the details on their favorite wrestlers and biggest rivals.  For those of you unfamiliar with Trackwrestling, it is a program designed by former wrestler Justin Tritz that provides live updates of matches as they happen and then stores those results so one can access them years later.  It started in Wisconsin and has spread across the country.  There is no doubt it has done legions to promote the sport in Wisconsin and around the country by educating the fanbase on who the competition is, which just ups the excitement surrounding the sport.

This past weekend, I photographed the state tournament in Wisconsin for the Eau Claire Leader Telegram, the Duluth News Tribune and the Monroe County Publishers.  It was a great trip back to the Kohl Center where I had spent numerous hours in college covering Badger basketball and hockey games and it was awesome seeing some of the guys who helped teach me what it meant to be a photojournalist in Joe Koshollek and Andy Manis.  What made the tournament particularly fun was seeing Matt Tourdot from my hometown Spartans cap off a 50-0 season with a 7-0 victory in the finals over Lodi’s Cody Endres.  I run a wrestling blog during the season at Spartanwrestling.com that covers the Spartans and it was nice to end the year on a high note.

The photos below are a mix of the three days’ action.  Below are links to a few larger photo galleries from the state tournament, but after the links are my favorite images from three days in Madison.

State Wrestling Day One |  State Wrestling Day Two |  Finals:  Matt Tourdot vs. Cody Endres |  Day Three:  The Finals

www.derekmontgomery.com

As I was driving back to Duluth a couple weeks ago, I was thinking about this when I drove into some thick snow squalls just south of Superior.  Just about every square inch of the landscape turned white, which forced me to drive slower, but when things look like what they do below, it’s a good thing.  And like most storms to pass through my area, the remnants of this storm lasted for a day then were gone as quickly as they came.

Minnesota Public Radio contacted me to shoot pictures of a Wisconsin DNR pilot who tracks radio-collared wolves for a story about continuing efforts to get wolves delisted from federal protection.  Farmers and hunters have been complaining for a few years now that the wolf population in this part of the country is starting to get out of hand and this year saw a record number of wolves (16) killed and those were only the ones that were found so that number is just a fraction of how many were probably killed.   This sounded like a cool assignment, but I was worried we would only see one wolf at a time or that the woods would be so dense that it would be impossible to see them from up in the sky.  I was so wrong on both accounts.

Now I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have the wolfpack scene from “The Hangover” playing over and over again in my head.  I just love that movie.  Anyway, back to my story.  The wolves have a radio collar attached to them and the pilot, Phil Miller, used a GPS tracking system that beeps when the airplane gets closer to the animals.  When the beeping really picks up, it’s time to start looking on the ground for the animal, which can be tough when the woods are thick.  The first animal, a lone wolf, took about five minutes to find.  We located him sitting just off to the side of a deer stand.  It was too thick to photograph so we moved onto the next group.

This was the first of two packs we would see on the day and it would be the biggest.  We flew a few minutes before the GPS started beeping again.  We saw one wolf then another and another and another and this kept going until it stopped at 11.  This was the pack I was hoping would be out in the middle of a lake or out in the open, but they still remained in fairly dense forest.  The third and fourth pictures are from this pack and the fourth one demonstrates just how hard it was at times to find these animals if you weren’t already locked onto their location.

So after circling them for 10 minutes shooting pictures and freezing the face of Minnesota Public Radio reporter Bob Kelleher from my need to open the window of the plane to shoot pictures, we decided to move on.  This third radio-collared animal was supposed to be part of a group of nine wolves.  And with this, my hopes and dreams for the assignment came true as we came upon a beaver pond and five of the wolves were walking and lounging around in the middle.  No trees to obstruct, no bushes to get in the way.  It was a perfect setting and with fresh snow, the tracks the wolves made were quite visible as well, which just added to the photos.  We spent about 15 minutes circling these guys before we left to track two more radio-collared animals.  After that, I took some pictures of Bob at the controls before watching the last radio-collared wolf trot along a snowmobile path.

I had never seen a wolf in the wild and after reading what one did to a woman’s dog in Ely, I don’t think I’d want to either.  You can find out what happened to that woman’s dog by clicking here and reading Minnesota Public Radio’s story about the flight and efforts to delist the wolves.  I hope you have as good a time looking at these pictures as I did taking them.  One thing for all you people out there that I learned from this trip… Dramamine will knock you out.  I thought I might need some because of all the banking, spinning and twisting the pilot needed to do to get a good look at the wolves, but I didn’t get sick and all it did was make me nod off in the middle of conversations with Mr. Kelleher on the way back.  Sorry Bob!  Anyway, on to the photos!

I have no idea how in the previous three years that I’ve been up here that I never made it down to the shore or up along Skyline Parkway to photograph this amazing event.  I have no doubt I will be returning later this week for some more shots.  To get these, I had to rise at 530 a.m. and drive down to Canal Park.  I made it there way too early as I waited in the parking lot for almost an hour before any light broke through the horizon.  At about 7 a.m., the parking lots began filling with other people who had the same idea as me.  They lugged their tripods, cameras, jackets and mittens out to the shore to capture what in my mind is one of nature’s most awesome spectacles around these parts.  The temperature when I stepped out of the house this morning was a balmy 21 below zero with wind chills approaching 35 below.  Beautiful day.

The shots of the lighthouse were taken in Canal Park while the shots from above were taken along Skyline Parkway.  Next time I am going to have to remember to bring my tripod as I missed some cool shots right when the light was breaking through, but I’m both happy with my first effort and in awe of what Mother Nature shows us each and everyday.

All told we saw about two feet of snow with some freezing rain, sleet and high winds on top of that.  From about midday Thursday and continuing now, we have had precipitation of some form falling.  It’s been awesome.

One of my favorite places to go when storms bring high winds is Lake Superior.  I didn’t grow up near a very large lake so every time a storm comes into Duluth, I get fascinated by the waves and the way they crash into the rocks in Canal Park and along the lakewalk.  I think it even fascinates many native Duluthians to a degree because the parking lot on Christmas day was packed full of people coming down to check out the action.

I didn’t really set out with the purpose of showing the calm of this storm juxtaposed against the fury, but that’s the way it turned out.  I first set out Thursday morning to find some images of the storm.  I’ve always wanted to descend into one of Duluth’s many streams that sit at the bottom of what amount to deep gorges carved out of the land.  Due to work and time constraints in the past, I never had that opportunity, but now I do.  One of the amazing things about Duluth is that you can be right in the middle of 90,000 people and feel like you are in the middle of the woods.  That is how I felt when I was down at the bottom of a frozen stream.  Snowflakes were falling in what seemed like slow-motion, branches were aching from the weight of newly fallen snow and a muffled gurgle from the stream was bubbling up through cracks in the ice.  It was a stark contrast to what I would experience a day later along the shores of Lake Superior.

Imagine being out in the middle of a field with no trees, no obstructions and have 60mph winds pelt you with grains of sand and rice.  That’s what it was like being down near Lake Superior minus the sand and rice.  Thirty foot waves were crashing against the shore tossing chunks of ice and small pebbles against those who ventured too closely.  Vehicles in the parking lots with a front row view of the action would be routinely pelted with spray as the waves crashed over the rocks lining the shore.  These vehicles were probably sitting a good 60 yards from the shore, but the relentless winds kept pushing the water inland.

While I’m ready for a break from the nasty weather, I still wouldn’t mind this happening a few times a month.