Stay Boreal: The Story Behind Minnesota's One-of-a-Kind Treehouse Cabins
Updated: Sep 18
How owner and builder Alex Schauer brought an ambitious vision to life high above the trees on Minnesota's North Shore
I have photographed hundreds of cabins, vacation rentals, hotels and resorts across the country, but every so often I walk into a place that feels genuinely unlike anything I have seen before. Stay Boreal is one of those places.
Set among the treetops overlooking Lake Superior on Minnesota's North Shore, Stay Boreal's two newest cabins are architectural experiences as much as they are places to stay. One is held high above the ground by a single massive monopole. The other is elevated on stilts. Both place guests at canopy level, with walls of glass framing the trees and lake beyond.
Before photographing the property, I wanted to understand what it actually took to create something this unusual. I spoke with Stay Boreal owner and builder Alex Schauer about the original spark, the enormous engineering challenge, the brutal winter months he spent working high in the air and the tiny details that reveal just how much thought went into the guest experience.
A Better View Became a Bigger Idea
The idea began with the landscape. Alex realized the view of Lake Superior grew dramatically better as you moved higher above the property. After building Stay Boreal's two cabins, he initially set out to add a sauna for one of them. His solution was a treehouse sauna.
Once it was finished, he began imagining what would happen if that concept became an entire cabin.
"What if we do this as an actual cabin way up in the sky with amazing views, kind of panoramic? Sitting in the cabin, you can see the treetops and the lake all in one shot."
Alex wanted to create something that stood apart from the condos and traditional log cabins found throughout the North Shore. The goal was never simply to lift a familiar cabin off the ground. It was to create the feeling of being perched directly in the landscape. "I wanted people to feel like they were perched right in front of the lake, right in the tops of the trees with an incredible view, and I think we got it."
A Design That Grew More Ambitious
Alex's first sketches were considerably simpler: a basic structure supported at four corners. Once he brought the concept to the architects, however, the project evolved quickly.
He describes his original vision as perhaps 50 to 70 percent of the final building's "cool factor." The architects amplified his sketches and returned with renderings that were wilder, more complex and admittedly much more expensive than he had initially planned.
Instead of pulling back, Alex doubled down.
"Once I saw the first renderings from the architects, I'm like, 'Okay, we're taking this. We're running with it.' Then I doubled down and said, 'Let's make this even cooler.'"
The monopole cabin also carried a thread of inspiration from tiny cabins Alex had seen in the fjords of Norway, built around what appeared to be a single tree trunk. He wondered whether a similar concept could be created on a monopole in the United States on Minnesota's North Shore.
How Do You Support a Cabin on One Pole?
The finished monopole cabin looks effortless, but making it safe, stable and comfortable required an extraordinary amount of engineering.
Alex earned his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. When the architectural direction was established, he called his longtime friend Tyler Johnson, whom he had attended engineering school with and who now works for a licensed structural firm.
Alex warned Tyler that he had a crazy project for him. That description proved accurate: according to Alex, the structural team ultimately put about three times more work into the project than they initially expected.
Lake Superior adds another layer of difficulty. The site carries an Exposure D wind classification, the most rigorous wind-exposure category used in structural design. A building can be structurally safe while still moving enough to make its occupants uncomfortable. The challenge was ensuring that a cabin perched on one pole would not sway or bounce like a billboard in the wind.
The solution begins far below what any guest can see.
Crews used dynamite to blast approximately 14 feet into the ground. Nearly three concrete trucks worth of concrete went into the monopole foundation. First came a footing pad measuring 12 feet by 12 feet and four feet thick. On top of it, crews poured a five-foot-by-five-foot pier standing eight feet tall. The entire assembly was anchored into the rock.
"We have just a crazy, crazy, crazy footing to make sure that cabin is not going anywhere. It's rock solid. It's not moving at all."
That may be the most impressive feature of Stay Boreal that guests will never see.
Building in the Sky
Alex had completed most of the work on the earlier A-frames himself and initially intended to take a similarly hands-on approach with the treehouses. He quickly discovered these structures were far too complex to tackle alone.
Even with a crew, he was on site nearly every day, swinging a hammer alongside the builders, leading the work and ensuring the smallest decisions stayed true to the original vision.
Simply working high above the ground added months to the build. Before the bridge was installed roughly two-thirds of the way through the project, forgetting a screwdriver or wrench meant climbing all the way down a ladder. Lumber had to be maneuvered through existing trees and suspended in the air. Every normal construction task became slower and more complicated.
For Alex, the most difficult stretch came around the end of 2025. A crew he had lined up needed to leave because of family circumstances. That put Alex largely on his own for roughly eight weeks during January and February.
He worked about 25 feet in the air through temperatures that sometimes reached 10 below zero, blowing snow, short days and long periods of darkness. Friends occasionally traveled north to help, but much of the work was his alone.
"January and February, working by myself in the cold, in the dark, progress just goes so slow when you're 25 feet in the air by yourself in those kinds of conditions."
He estimates winter conditions cut productivity roughly in half. Equipment fails to start. Materials need to be warmed. Heavy clothing restricts movement, and thick gloves turn simple tasks into slow ones.
"Working by myself in the winter in the sky was absolutely miserable."
The Last Ten Percent
The greatest difficulty in an architectural project like this, Alex explained, is often not the large idea. It is protecting that idea through hundreds of small decisions.
Details sometimes had to be taken apart and rebuilt, not because the first version was necessarily unsafe or unacceptable, but because it did not fully realize the design. Without that willingness, he believes a bold concept can become diluted one compromise at a time.
"These little, tiny details all add up cumulatively to really pull something cool off. And those little, tiny details often take the longest time. It's the last 10 percent."
One perfect example is hidden inside the ceiling. The cabins' expansive glass demanded privacy shades, but Alex did not want visible rollers interrupting the clean architecture. Concealing level roller shades inside a sloped roof while accommodating the steel and lumber required for structural integrity, became a complex coordination problem for Alex and the engineering team.
The result is quiet and nearly invisible. At the push of a button, guests can preserve the glass-filled openness or create instant privacy and darkness.
The Bridge Is Part of the Stay
Of everything he created, Alex may be proudest of the elevated skywalk leading to the cabins.
He saw the bridge as the opening chapter of the experience. Before guests even enter their cabin, the path carries them through the trees while gradually revealing more of Lake Superior.
The bridge was originally designed in wood. Alex changed it to steel because he wanted it to feel completely solid beneath guests' feet and immediately communicate that these unusual buildings were strong, stable and thoughtfully made."The bridge is my complete baby. I have put so much love and thought and effort into something that seems so simple."
A softly glowing LED integrated into the handrail illuminates the path without shining brightly into the cabins. Even more remarkably, the entire bridge is heated.
Alex spent weeks researching, sourcing parts and working through the assembly because reliable systems for heating pedestrian bridges are not readily available. The finished system keeps the walking surface free from the frequent snowfalls that collect along the North Shore. Whether a guest walks to the car at six in the morning or returns late at night, the bridge is intended to remain dry and free of packed ice.
It is practical and safety-minded, but it is also a form of understated luxury: a major piece of engineering whose greatest success is that guests barely need to think about it.
A Project Built for People, Not Maximum Profit
Alex is candid that Stay Boreal could have been built for far less. The team could have simplified the design, removed difficult details and made decisions that produced a faster return.
That was never the point.
"This wasn't a maximizing-profits project. This was: How cool and how great can we do this?"
From the massive foundation buried in the rock to the invisible shades and snow-free skywalk, the same intention runs throughout the property. Alex wanted every detail to matter and for guests to recognize, even if they could not identify every reason why, that the place was created with genuine care.
"I wanted every detail to matter, and for the guests to tell that love was put into it, because we put our heart into it."
That is ultimately what makes Stay Boreal so compelling. The cabins are visually spectacular, but their story is larger than their appearance. They are the product of architectural imagination, rigorous engineering, physical endurance and a builder who refused to let the original vision be watered down.
There truly is nothing else quite like them on Minnesota's North Shore and very little like them anywhere in the world.
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