On June 15, Sean Bloomfield and Colton Witte, both 18, and both graduates this spring of Chaska High School, completed a 2,250 mile canoe trip from their hometown to York Factory, on Hudson Bay, Manitoba.
Following a route blazed by the late newsman Eric Sevareid and a friend in 1930, the young paddlers made the trip in 49 days, averaging more than 40 miles a day by paddling as much as 14 hours per day. Along the way they were re-supplied twice by their parents and slept in an occasional warm bed. But mostly they paddled, ate cold pizza and at night crawled into an inexpensive tent they bought on the Internet.
In the interview below, the young men discuss the logistics of the trip and what they learned from it.
Q: Would you, in retrospect, recommend the trip to other people?
Sean: Yes, but I would give them a warning. The trip isn't all fun and games. You have to be very determined.
Colton: I would recommend it to some people, depending on their preparation and experience. If you have the right experience and the right mindset, yes, it can be a good trip. But in a lot of places, if we hadn't known what we were doing, things could have turned out much worse. It's definitely something you want to be prepared for. I wouldn't flat out encourage anyone to do it, or discourage them from doing it. With the right preparation, yes.
Q: What gave you the confidence you could make a trip of this length and difficulty?
Colton: Our trip last year from Lake of the Woods to Lake Superior was good preparation. That trip refined our expedition skills. Trips like that one require longer commitments. You're out for a longer time, you carry more food than you would on shorter trips, and you encounter more severe weather than you would on a short trip.