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Musher switches to canoe
Carter to follow winter of dogsled racing with solo canoe voyage of 1,300 miles.

By Michael Pearlman

For Dan Carter, piloting a team of sled dogs through brutal winter weather didn't provide a full year's worth of challenge and adventure.

On June 1, the eight-year valley resident will leave Grand Portage, Minn., with his 44-pound We-No-Na Prism canoe and a goal of paddling a continuous route to Hudson Bay in Manitoba. Along the 1,300-mile journey he expects to encounter high winds, choppy water and challenging rapids in addition to an abundance of solitude and beautiful vistas.

Carter, 33, first hatched the idea for his solitary paddling adventure in 1995 during an early guiding experience in the Boundary Waters area of northern Minnesota, which is on his route. While racing sled dogs last winter for Jackson Hole Iditarod Sled Tours, he made the decision that this would be the summer he would finally act on his longtime dream.

"I've done solo trips before, so I think it's just a question of being prepared for it," Carter says. Though he's an experienced river rat who's guided trips throughout Utah, Colorado and Wyoming, Carter admits that he doesn't have much whitewater canoe experience. "There's a 400-mile stretch of water that can include up to Class 3 rapids," he said. "I'm sure on many occasions I'll be deciding whether to portage or paddle."

Carter's trip will begin with a nine-mile portage to Gunflint Lodge in the heart of the Boundary Waters area. From there he will pick up two additional 60-pound packs of supplies and follow a series of long, narrow border lakes several hundred miles to the Lake of the Woods, where he will enter Manitoba, Canada. "This is an old trapping and trade route used to access the hunting grounds of the Great North Woods," Carter says. "It's the path of least resistance."

Though he has researched the route extensively, Carter is prepared to encounter the unexpected, particularly on the final section north of Lake Winnipeg to York Factor, a town on the southern edge of Hudson Bay that marks the end of his journey. For that section of the trip, he hopes to bushwhack his way into the God's River drainage, one of the area's least-traveled river drainages.

One hurdle he is prepared for is the 250-mile paddle on the eastern shoreline of Lake Winnipeg, where wind conditions can wreak havoc on a solitary canoeist. "If the prevailing winds are out of the north, it can be blowing big waves, and I could be tied down for a couple of days," Carter says. "It could go smoothly, but it could also take me three weeks to get across that one lake if it's really windy."

Carter expects at least 50 portages during the trip, though it could be many more. Each will require two trips, with Carter transporting his canoe on a specially designed pack with an external frame with extender bars. He anticipates having at least two supply drops during the trip in order for him to avoid carrying additional weight.

Although some of the trip will take place on rivers and lakes that are developed along the shoreline, portions of the expedition will take Carter through wilderness areas. He's prepared for the possibility of not having any human contact for days or weeks on end. Accompanying him will be a GPS and a satellite phone for emergency situations. He has set up a Web site, www.superiortohudson.com which will be updated periodically with reports and journal entries.

Carter grew up in Brownsburg, Ind., and earned a degree in construction management from Purdue University. Since then, he has been a full-time river and dogsled guide, aside from a brief stint as a project manager for a building firm in Minnesota.

He has competed in the past three International Stage Stop Sled Dog Races and says racing sled dogs has helped him acquire the perseverance to complete this expedition.

"The biggest thing that'll transfer from the dogsledding is the idea of finishing something that I started," he says. "Some of these longer continuous races I've done aren't a joyride. But it's something you've decided to do and you go through fatigue and get cold and uncomfortable, but the satisfaction of finishing is why we do it."

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