Attendance dropped little from the roughly 250 who attend on Sundays, despite temperatures that reached 30 below, says Kyle Gunderson. “We’re a hearty people,” he explains.
Some might have another description for Gunderson and several other men in the church who went snowmobiling on Saturday. “We always pick the worst days of the year although we don’t mean to,” he says. “We make plans two weeks out and it’s too late to change them.”
Having “absolutely no skin exposed” is the key to snowmobiling at 70 miles per hour when the air is 30 degrees below zero, he says. “The gear keeps you warm.”
Last week, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office sent the city attorney a certificate declaring International Falls the “Icebox of the Nation.” Located on the Canadian border, the town had been battling with Fraser, Colorado, for the designation.
Gunderson knows that temperatures further north in Canada drop even further. Last year, the church van refused to start during a youth trip when temperatures were more than 50 below.
Temperatures in International Falls were expected to soar into the negative teens today. Below-zero temperatures are common for this time of year and discourage hardly any activity, Gunderson says. “That’s what we pride ourselves on.”
