The historic route from Minnesota to the Hudson Bay has long captured the attention of canoeists. In summer 2025, four student paddlers and Girl Scout Alumni plan to tackle the over one thousand-mile route through large lakes, rivers, rapids and polar bear country to inspire young girls and women in paddlesports.
Abby Cichocki, Emma Brackett, Helena Karlstrom and Olivia Bledsoe met through their various roles in the Girl Scouts and Scouting America programs, all four with experience in professional guiding programs. This summer, the all-female team plans to tackle the historic expedition canoe route from the waters of Lake Superior at Grand Portage to York Factory on the Hudson Bay, calling themselves and their expedition the Hudson Bay Girls.
Hudson Bay Girls prepare to canoe from Lake Superior to the Hudson Bay
While prepping for this several-month long canoe expedition, the four have also been attending college. Cichocki is a junior at UW Madison, Brackett a senior at Clark University, Beldsoe a sophomore at Virginia Tech, and Karlstrom a senior at Ohio University. Planning for the trip as students has been like another full-time job.
“We meet every week, typically for a few hours. We text every single day. We are in constant communication and we’re all constantly doing work on top of our schoolwork,” explained Karlstrom.
The team will begin their journey with the 8.5-mile portage from Lake Superior to the Pigeon River. From there, the Hudson Bay Girls will travel along the Border Route through the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness toward International Falls, where they’ll then turn north and begin the trek through Lake of the Woods. From here, the team will head up the Winnipeg River then spend an estimated three to four weeks working their way up Lake Winnipeg’s eastern shore.
The final leg of the trip will include three and a half weeks on the Hayes River and conclude at York Factory on the Hudson Bay– a route popularized in Eric Sevareid’s 1935 Canoeing With The Cree.
The route includes the traditional and cultural homelands of the Anishinabee and Cree First Nations.
Hudson Bay Girls aim to inspire more young women in paddlesports
The team was inspired to tackle this particular route by Natalie Warren’s Hudson Bay Bound, which followed the expedition of Warren and Ann Raiho as the first-documented female duo to complete the route.
“Just hearing about Natalie and Anne’s story as the first two women to publicly paddle that route was just so inspiring,” shared Bledsoe. “I don’t think it had ever occurred to me that I could be on an all-female expedition.”
Just as the Hudson Bay Girls were inspired by Warren and Raiho, the Hudson Bay Girls hope to use their trip to encourage other young women to participate in paddlespots. On their expedition website, the Hudson Bay Girls write that “is that a girl under there?” is one of the most common things they hear on the portage trail as female canoe guides and trippers.
A 2019 report from the American Canoe Association found that the percentage of female canoeists fell by six percent from 2013-2018. For the Hudson Bay Girls, Girl Scouts and youth programming acted as a gateway into the outdoors and canoe trips.
“Girl Scouts was one of the most impactful experiences I had throughout my entire life,” shared Cichocki. “I moved around as a kid, but Girl Scouts was one thing that was always constant and it was always supportive. Whenever I do something hard, I say to myself, ‘it’s not as hard as carrying an Alumacraft canoe over a two mile portage.’”
Hudson Bay Girls on what makes a successful expedition
When asked about what challenges they expect to face on their 1,200-mile paddle, the Hudson Bay Girls agreed that they expected the biggest challenges to be mental rather than physical.
“I feel like when people think about challenges, we tend to really gravitate towards the material,” shared Bledsoe. “Expeditions fall apart based on what happens in your head first.”
While the Hudson Bay Girls’ expedition has a concrete end at York Factory, the paddlers agreed that for the team the intangible markers of a successful expedition were more important than a finish line.
“I would say a successful trip is one where we come out the other side, all of us together and we’re still talking to each other, we are still friends and we’ve grown and we’ve become better, more interesting people because of it,” explained Cichocki.
“If we can change one person’s life and have one young girl look up at us and think maybe I can do that too, I think that would be a success for us,” added Karlstrom.
With an estimated 85-days of canoe tripping to look forward to, the Hudson Bay Girls are excited for everything from traveling north and watching the terrain change to laying on rocks in the sun like lizards.
“I’m so excited for the food because it’s going to be so good,” shared Brackett. “Abby’s parents have been making so much food and helping us dehydrate and freeze dry.”
Follow the expedition on the Hudson Bay Girls Website or on social media.
This is a great idea, young women taking a trip hoping to inspire young girls into kayaking and canoeing. Girls and women have role models but so few compared to boys and men. Everyday hero’s are so inspiring to everyone and these are the people who can make the real difference to young lives.