Hudson Bay Bound

Ann Raiho, paddling in the bow up front, and Natalie Warren following the route to Hudson Bay made famous by Eric Sevareid and William Port, who first made this venture in 1930. File photo

If you want to sit down and read about two remarkable young ladies who went on an epic adventure together, Hudson Bay Bound is a book for you.

Published by the University of Minnesota Press, in 226 well-written pages, Natalie Warren recounts the often times perilous canoe trip she took with Ann Raiho. The two best friends spent 85 days covering 2,000 miles and paddled into history when they arrived at York Factory in Hudson Bay, becoming the first women to make this epic journey.

Along the way their friendship was tested, and for a time they passed notes instead of talking to each other. They battled high winds, storms, rapids, polar bears, snake nests, and faced unrelenting hunger.

It doesn’t seem like it was ten years ago that Natalie and Ann were in Grand Marais getting ready for their trip. Jack Stone from Stone Harbor Wilderness gave them the Kevlar canoe they used for the journey. As recent graduates from St. Olaf College, they had met at Camp Menogyn as high schoolers. The two young women were pretty much flat broke and had to gather what they needed from outdoor companies like Stone Harbor so they could make the trip.

Ten years after Natalie Warren and Ann Raiho paddled to Hudson Bay, Warren recounts their journey in this new book.

Early on, Natalie and Ann faced some formidable obstacles, but it would get far more strenuous as they ventured forward.

“Paddled upstream on the Minnesota River into 35 miles per hour winds. Endured several days of over 100-degree heat. Gotten lost (briefly), battled rough currents in flooded waters, but are still on pace to make Hudson Bay by early September,” wrote Natalie in her log she shared with readers of the Cook County News- Herald.

There were good days on the rivers, and plenty of folks befriended them, taking them in for the night or feeding them along the way. Along the journey, they encountered eagles, otters, wolves, caribou, and watched fish jump around their canoe.

They left June 2, 2011, from Fort Snelling Park in a 17-foot Kevlar Langford canoe given to them by Stone Harbor Wilderness Supply of Grand Marais. They named their canoe Kawena Kinomaeta, which means “no worries” in Cree. They called it Queenie, for short.

“We’ve been working really hard to get through the flooded waters. Once, we tried to take a shortcut through a lagoon to cut off a bend in the river. We were in there for about 45 minutes and lost every sense of direction! When we found our way back out, we were only about 10 feet upstream of where we had entered the lagoon,” was an early report.

Natalie and Ann stopped in LeSuer, St. Peter, Mankato, New Ulm, Granite Falls and Montevideo. From there, they traversed through a small portion of South Dakota, and then headed across North Dakota and into Canada.

They traveled the Minnesota River, Red River and in Canada, they fought big wind and waves on Lake Winnipeg before entering the Hayes River and heading for the homestretch, Hudson Bay, where they boarded a plane that came to York Factory to pick them up.

Crossing a large stretch of open water, Natalie writes, “The beast’s claws scraped at the sky from the water below. The large swells grew taller and sharper, threatening to crest and crash with each peak. If we swamped we would be in trouble. We would lose everything and have to swim ten kilometers (6.2 miles) to shore.”

During a stop at the Cree First Nation at Norway House, Ann and Natalie adopted a stray dog and named him Myhan. Myhan, who was supposed to scare off polar bears, finished the route in their canoe and today lives with Ann in Colorado where she is doing postdoc research for her PhD in Biology from Notre Dame.

When Ann’s parents were asked, “What is your largest concern for this summer?”

Mamma Raiho replied, “Ann and Natalie going over dams in the canoe, crashing into rocks, being attacked by a polar bear or a regular bear, being stalked by a crazy person, surviving a tornado, getting sunburn, getting sick, breaking something, arguing, losing the SAT phone, losing the canoe paddle, missing the floatplane, missing the train, (and finally) missing mom and dad.”

When Natalie’s parents were asked, what did you think when the idea first came up?

They replied, “Another crazy idea of Natalie’s.” and then, “No, you aren’t going!”

But of course they did go, and you can read about their amazing adventure in Natalie’s recounting of their trip to Hudson Bay. The forward is by Ann Bancroft. Ann and Natalie each write in the Afterword segment of the book.