Lonnie Dupre and Pascale Marceau work their way up Mount Carpe. The couple is attempting to become the first people to reach the summit of Mount Carpe in the winter. In the past 6-7 days the duo has run into some tough climbing and have been thwarted so far in finding a safe path to the mountain top.
Lonnie Dupre and Pascale Marceau have encountered some tough sledding as they try to become the first people to summit Mount Carpe in the winter.
At 12,552 feet, Mount Carpe stands in the shadow of Alaska’s Denali Mountain. Dupre and Marceau can expect minus 50-degree temperatures, high winds and 10 hours of daylight.
The duo will fly into Katishna, the last stop on the Denali Park Road, which is closed for the winter. On skis, they will make their way onto the Muldrow Glacier via Wonder Lake, Turtle Hill, and McGonagall pass. This route was first used in 1913 to summit Denali.
On the glacier, the duo will ski around the Carpe ridge to Tralekia glacier. Dupre and Marceau will then begin their journey up the mountain via a spur route off of the west fork and climb the southwest face of Carpe.
This path was used before. In the summer (August) of 1995, a team traveled this way, summiting Mount Carpe. But no one has made it to the top of the mountain during the winter.
The couple began on March 2 and made great progress the first five days. They figured they were only one or two days from reaching the summit, but then they found the route they had picked to be impassable. They attempted to summit on two other routes but were unsuccessful. On March 15 they were still at 7,600 feet, cold, tired and frustrated.
“We tried to negotiate the route up Carpe in three different areas after running into dangerous slab rock that is in broken shale just beneath the snow,” Dupre said.
On March 16 they were going to continue their search in a solid route to the summit of Carpe. The weather is cold, but with little wind which should allow for some decent travel conditions, noted Dupre.
The duo began their adventure pulling 250 pounds of gear, mostly food and fuel. They have run into wind chill temperatures at 70F below zero. Some of the time they have pulled sleds up a 45-degree slope, which exhausts them.
“It’s also been very, very cold,” said Dupre.
With their food supply dwindling and their options running short, the couple will only make a summit run if it is safe and the weather holds.
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