A canoe trip to Hudson Bay? Tall order fits brothers to a tee

You might see more bears than boats if you paddle a canoe from Minnesota to Hudson Bay. But you are even more likely to bump into kids from Minnesota.

Last spring, I chronicled the story of the Chaska teenagers who embarked at the end of April on a canoe adventure that took them 2,250 miles from Chaska to the bay. Today, I bring you brothers from St. Anthony, Matt and David Seiffert, who finished the same trek last week, braving the bears, storms, rivers and rapids of one of the most grueling adventures on the continent.

It took the Seifferts a little longer than it took Sean Bloomfield and Colton Witte, of Chaska -- 66 days, compared with 49 days for the Chaska teens. But if the Seifferts weren't the fastest, they were the tallest.

Matt, 22, is 6-foot-4. His "little" brother, David, 21, is 6-foot-9. At those sizes, the tent they slept in for the past two months -- 6 1/2 feet long -- was a mite cramped. But the Seiffert brothers are used to sharing quarters. They have been best friends since childhood and graduated a year apart from Minnehaha Academy in Minneapolis. So when Matt decided last winter to canoe to Hudson Bay (not knowing the Chaska teens would be doing the same), he knew where to find his perfect canoe partner: David, who will be a senior at Luther College in Iowa.

The brothers put in on the Minnesota River at St. Peter on June 2, the morning after Matt graduated from Gustavus Adolphus College.

The college is just up the hill from their starting point. Matt hopes to go to medical school some day. But he thought the day after leaving college was a good day to start paddling your canoe.

His parents weren't so sure.

"That was a mood-killer right there," Stephen says of the moment. "We both thought it was a risky, expensive, dumb thing to do. That was our first thought. And our second."

But it's not easy to talk common sense to 20-somethings whose minds are made up and who are taller than you. After a while, the Seifferts accepted their sons' determination to face the physical, emotional and financial demands of the adventure (the trip cost the brothers about $5,000).

"Matthew said it would be the last time he'd be free to do something adventurous and memorable, before he was tied down," his dad says. "We knew there was no stopping him."

Matt got the canoeing bug while working as a counselor at a church camp in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. He and his family read "Canoeing With The Cree," journalist Eric Sevareid's account of the 1930 canoe trip he made from Fort Snelling to Hudson Bay with Walt Port. When they did, they learned what a pain in the woods Lake Winnipeg is.

The brothers hit the big lake in stormy mid-summer, stymied by wind and waves for days. Once, camping above a shore, they watched in amazement as waves rolled over the top of a nearby island and then on to their campsite, soaking their gear. They lost a spoon in that incident -- one of two they had with them.

They reached Hudson Bay and York Factory last Wednesday, Aug. 6 (there is still thick sea ice in the middle of the bay), and were picked up by a float plane and taken to the settlement of Gillam, where they had to wait until Friday for a train to take them and their canoe (an 18-foot Wenonah Champlain) to Winnipeg. The long train ride -- 32 hours -- was interrupted when another train derailed ahead of them. Passengers were taken off the train, put on a bus, and ferried ahead of the wreck to another train, but the canoe stayed behind.

On Sunday, the Seifferts were in Winnipeg, waiting for the canoe and a ride to Hankinson, N.D., from their maternal grandparents, Norris and Joyce Braaten, of Hankinson. With luck, they will be home in St. Anthony today, 72 days (66 on the water) after starting out in St. Peter: Sore, elated, exhausted, and proud.

"It's going to take awhile for what they have accomplished to soak in," says their dad. "But Matt says he knows now that he can do whatever he wants to do, if he puts his mind to it.

"His mother and I were anxious through the whole thing. But the guys made it, and this will always be a part of them."