In My TBR Stack:

Hard Rivers: The Untold Saga of La Salle: Expedition II
by Craig P. Howard
River Grove Books
Trade Paperback

From the author's website:

In Hard Rivers, author Craig P. Howard recounts the harrowing journey of La Salle: Expedition II, a reenactment of the 1681–82 voyage of La Salle from Montreal to the Gulf of Mexico. The crew, made up of sixteen teenage boys and seven adults led by one charismatic teacher, set out on August 11, 1976, from Canada and arrived on April 9, 1977, at the Gulf, 3,300 miles later. Lake Michigan and Midwest rivers froze solid in record cold, forcing the teens to march 500 miles, first from Chicago to St. Joseph, Michigan and then across Indiana and Illinois. Despite temperatures of twenty-seven below and wind chills of seventy-eight below, near fatalities outside Green Bay, and a truck accident in Indiana that hospitalized four, they achieved something that had never been done before and will never be done again