When Lonnie Dupre isn’t working as a carpenter or giving a lecture or presentation about some of his past quests, he’s planning another adventure, and this one involves taking a team to Nepal to investigate several unclimbed mountain that are 6,000 to 7,000 meters high. These mountain areas will soon be opened up by the government of Nepal.
Dupre will join with another U.S. climber and others from Spain and Nepal to form the Vertical Nepal Team. During the two-month trip (expected to take place in 2016) they will examine the hidden slopes by foot to choose a peak they will hopefully get to climb in the future. Part of their work will involve choosing a climbing path and determining the supplies they will need to take with them to make that ascent.
“One of the candidates is 7,915-meter high Tenzing Peak, named after the first Sherpa to summit Mount Everest, Tenzig Norgay alongside Sir Edmund Hillary,” said Dupre.
During the time in Nepal the team will produce and conduct an interactive, common core based curriculum detailing their adventures. This will include climate change, environmental conservation, and Nepalese culture that they will share with American schools.
“Our goal is make it [the curriculum] available to teachers and parents at no charge via Internet download,” said Dupre.
“We will also collect high altitude snow and ice samples for Adventurers & Scientists for Conservation for studies on rapid glacial recession. Most glaciers are retreating at a rate of 10 to 74 meters annually due to climate change,” stated Dupre.
“We will also work in cooperation with the Snow Leopard Conservancy to gather information and evidence of snow leopards in areas where the climbers travel,” he said.
Another goal of the group will be to provide assistance and bring enrichment to rural communities who have little contact with the outside world.
“Our preference is to work with established NGOs
( non- governmental organizations) that have infrastructure in the area and will make the best use of our contributions for longterm change. Vertical
Nepal is currently working with TRIFC. org to provide help to children with disabilities in Nepal by having access to education through supplies and support,” said Dupre.
Granite Gear, one of Vertical Nepal’s sponsors, will provide backpacks that will be filled with supplies donated to children with disabilities, added
Dupre.
A little history about Lonnie Dupre
In 2015 Lonnie Dupre became the first solo climber to reach the 20,320-foot summit of Denali (aka Mount McKinley) in the month of January. In 2009 Dupre and two others traveled to the North Pole on a 54-day expedition. In 2006 Dupre and former Grand Marais resident Eric Larsen pulled and a paddled modified canoes over 600 miles of sea ice from Canada to the North Pole. This was the first time anyone traveled to the North Pole over sea ice in the summer.
From 1997 to 2001 Dupre and Australian John Hoelscher completed the first circumnavigation of Greenland using dog sleds and kayaks in the summer.
In 1992 Dupre led a 3,059-mile, 185-day trek across the Canadian Arctic, the first ever west to east crossing of the Northwest Passage via sled dogs and skis. He also teamed up with a group and dogsledded the 1,000-mile leg from Lillehammer, Norway to Murmansk, Russia. They carried an environmental message from the closing ceremony of the XVII Winter Olympics at Lillehammer that eventually made it to Negano, Japan, the site of the 1998 Winter Olympics.
Dupre has been awarded the Soviet Sportsman Medal for Arctic exploration in 1989, and was elected a Fellow of the National Explorers Club in 1996. He was the keynote lecturer at the Fellows of the Royal Geographic Society in London upon completion of the Greenland Expedition and he has been featured in Reader’s Digest, Sports Illustrated, Outside and National Geographic Online.
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