03/29/2026
Great post by Follow Her North. These major trips can be incredibly fun and interesting, but be careful what you get into. It’s not always a walk-in the park and you need to understand what you’re getting into.
‼️I’ve been getting asked a lot over the years and in the last couple of days if I would offer a guided snowmobile trip to Churchill. ‼️
I truly appreciate the interest and the trust behind those questions, it means a lot.
After careful thought, I want to share openly that this is not a trip I will be offering as a guided experience.
Thank you so much for following along our adventures and all the kind words of encouragement! We truly are moved by all the participation on our expedition!
Let me just state a few points:
1. I always say I started snowmobiling as soon as my thumb was strong enough to squeeze a throttle. And from that very young age, most of the riding was off trail on rivers, creeks, logging roads, muskeg. And in the past few years, covering over 13 000km per year by guiding people across Northern Ontario. My body has been building endurance for many years. My dad and partner with both many years of experience as well.
2. Sometimes, just the first day from Hearst to Moosonee can be the hardest trip of your life. Like last year with my Women's trip (16h of slush). My dad also had a similar situation 7 years ago.
3. This whole trip is uncomfortable from the start to the end. No sit down, order food kinda spots. You don't even know if you will make it in time for the only store to be open to buy yourself some food. Accomodations are really limited. It's not like you can just Google for a hotel and book a room. You don't get to shower every night. Gas stations are open really limited time and usually in the time that you need to be covering distance.
4. We travelled insane distance of rarely anything under 300km with bigger days being around 540km. And no, you can't compare this to trail riding. This mileage was sometimes at 30km/h for 12 hours pretty much non stop in a cold arctic wind over the hardest snow drifts you ever encountered. Or 520km of snowcross track at -40°C.
As much as the pictures show its all beautiful and looked like good going. You really had to talked to yourself in your helmet. Singing "Just keep going, just keep going" like Dori in Nemo "Just keep swimming" through the roughest conditions I have ever had to traverse in my life, even if I couldn't feel 8/10 toes, even if I was hungry. I truly believe that you have to be extremely comfortable with the most extreme uncomfortable. And that comes with spending lots and lots of time out there. It is another level of craziness to then enjoy that extreme uncomfortable!
5. We were extremely lucky with weather. This trip can only be done at a specific time of the year and you can just hope for the best. We had perfect visibility all 6 days which is really rare. Throw in a day of blizzard in there and the trips becomes pure survival in no mans land where you can't even see the tip of your skis. Camping out in the middle of a storm with no trees surrounding you to keep you sheltered from the wind or to provide fire wood for a source of heat was our worse fear. This is the reality of what we could've encountered.
6. A breakdown haunting you for hundreds of kms. If a machine breaks up there, you either abandoned it or pull it forever! It's not like you can just hop on the train or flag down a truck or fix it. We could barely take pictures before our hands would freeze.. forget fixing a snowmobile.
7. As much as the destination sounds magical. Churchill truly is. But Churchill will still be magical even if you don't leave Hearst by snowmobile. My new friend Remi a local guide, offers a beautiful tour out of Thompson, MB. You will experience the most out of what Churchill has to offer and the journey from Thompson taking you through the mighty hills of Northern Manitoba, the large river escarpments, enourmess hydro electric dams and then experiencing the true Hudson Bay lowlands and it's wildlife.
North Star Tours
8. On this trip, each of us was fully responsible for ourselves. My dad and my partner both have the experience to manage their own equipment, decisions, and safety. If something went wrong with my gear: my clothing, helmet, or sled. It was mine to deal with, and I was only accountable for myself. That’s a very different situation from guiding others. Taking people on a trip like this would mean being responsible not only for my own safety, but for everyone else’s as well, in an environment where conditions are unpredictable and help is not readily available. That’s a level of risk I’m not willing to take. A way to look at it is this: I know the risks I’m choosing for myself, and I’m prepared to handle them. But I can’t make that same guarantee for someone beside me in those conditions. We were fortunate that everything went well on this journey but the reality is, things can change quickly, and when they do, the consequences can be serious.
9. As an outdoor guide, and as someone who grew up in the outdoors, I share both my guided experiences and my personal adventures on my Follow Her North page but there is an important distinction between the two.
My personal trips often involve a much higher level of risk and discomfort. They are challenges I choose for myself, based on a deep understanding of my own limits, experience, and preparation. I train continuously to be ready for unexpected situations and to manage risk as safely as possible in remote environments.
I hold training in Wilderness First Response, ice safety and rescue, wilderness survival, and risk management in the outdoors. And it’s precisely because of this background that I make the decision not to expose others to that same level of risk.
I also want to be clear, this is not about bragging or trying to impress. It’s actually the opposite. The goal is to share the reality behind what social media often doesn’t show.
It’s easy to see a photo from an adventure and think it looks effortless or purely beautiful, like someone standing on the summit of Everest. But what you don’t see is the preparation, the hardship, the risks, and everything it took to get there.
New tours will be available in the future but not this one☺️
