Update on This Summer’s Trip: The Last of Three Legs, This One Ending at Hudson Bay

In case we have new readers, or readers who have forgotten the details, let me briefly bring them up to speed. Three friends, Anne, Deb, and the Other Deb, started a canoe trip to Hudson Bay in 2022, with the goal being that we will have paddled the whole continent of North America from the Gulf of Mexico to Hudson Bay.. The first year we paddled from the headwaters of the Red River on the border of South Dakota to the Canadian border. The second year we paddled from Emerson, Manitoba, up the very large and beautiful Lake Winnipeg, ending at Norway House, which is a Cree settlement. This year we plan to follow a series of rivers and lakes to Hudson Bay. Once there, we hope to see polar bears and beluga whales in Churchill Bay before leaving town on the train.

Although summer seems a long way off, I am already starting to feel the pinch of not enough time to get all our preparations done. At this moment, our plan is to leave Minnesota on June 20th, leave Winnipeg on June 21st, leave Norway house on June 22nd, and start paddling! It is extremely difficult to plan a trip when you have no idea what the conditions will be:  the water level, the wind, the rain, the current, the bears, the rapids, the wildfires, the portaging conditions, our strength, and our abilities. The trip length of other groups who have done this route ranges from 12 days to 30 days. I can’t imagine that we are the absolute slowest group in history, but it could turn out that way, so we have planned for 30 days. Why is planning so important? Because when we take our last paddle stroke, we will be in the middle of nowhere: no roads, no towns, no people, no connectivity. We have to decide now, months in advance where we will be and when we will be there so that we can get picked up and returned to civilization. We always have the option of slowing down our progress if we are moving too fast, but if we are too slow we are out of luck. We don’t have a plan B for those circumstances. More on our route in the next post.