Natalie Warren and Ann Raiho are two weeks ahead of schedule as they paddle their canoe from Minneapolis to Hudson Bay, a trip of 2,250 miles. If successful, they will become the first women to complete this voyage first made famous by Eric Severeid and Walter Port. Severeid’s account of this journey was chronicled in 1930 in a book called Canoeing with the Cree.
The two former Camp Menogyn campers are using this voyage to inspire young people to take a break from technology and experience the outdoors, and, as Raiho said, “We are trying to raise money for scholarships so that more kids can attend Camp Menogyn.”
Menogyn is a YMCA-run camp on West Bearskin Lake. The only way into the camp is by canoe or boat. Campers are taught summer and winter outdoor skills and are taken on canoeing, backpacking, or rock climbing trips into the wilderness, some lasting 50 days.
To date, Warren and Raiho have completed an upstream paddle of the Minnesota River, navigated the Red River of the North, and are currently engaged in paddling the 270-mile length of Lake Winnipeg. Once across this large expanse of water, which the girls will traverse at night or during calm stretches, they will enter Hayes River and end at York Factory on the south shore of Hudson Bay and then they will be picked up and flown back to Minneapolis.
Hayes river is an adventure in itself. Three hundred miles long, Hayes River features a little bit of everything, from white water, large lake systems, waterfalls, gorges, deep valleys and tidal flats. In a span of 50 miles the Hayes lose 5/7ths of its elevation, and this is where its reputation for dangerous white water comes in. But Raiho and Warren have experienced difficult water in a canoe before.
The two met at Camp
Menogyn in 2007 on a seven-week canoe trip to Nunavut, Canada. That trip and subsequent canoe trips have honed their skills. Both young ladies are at home in the wilderness and in a canoe and should be ready for what is coming. And what is coming should be the continued adventure of a lifetime.
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