It’s not the Hilton, but this red tent and the snow piled round it keeps Lonnie Dupre and Pascale Marceau safe from the cold and ferocious winds that often blow across the mountain during their attempt to scale Mount Carpe. The duo came close, but couldn’t reach the summit and came back down the mountain.
Two hundred feet separated Lonnie Dupre and his climbing partner Pascale Marceau from making a run for the top of Mount Carpe.
But it was 200 feet of loose rock, hazardous footing and ever present danger that kept them back, and on March 17, after five attempts at finding a safe route up the mountain, they called it quits and began their long journey back down.
Located in the Denali National Park, Mount Carpe is 12,552 feet at its peak. It has never been climbed in the winter, and Dupre and Pascale can now come back and tell the public why that is so.
There were some tears of disappointment at not reaching the summit, said Dupre in his March 20 post. The couple had sore feet, and Pascale had narrowly avoided falling into a crevasse by the tips of her skis as Lonnie pulled her over the gap with a rope. They had also endured days of extreme cold and high winds.
As Dupre stated in his March 21 blog, everything worked well, the gear, the weather, the food, clothing, but the crevasses, he said, were relentless and the mountain never proffered a suitable way to the top as their food and fuel supplies started to dwindle.
The Denali National Park mountain range is near and dear to Dupre, but climbing her mountains in the winter is never easy, as Dupre has found. He made four attempts before becoming the first person to solo climb Mount Denali in January, and earlier this winter he had to abandon an attempt at becoming the first person to climb Mount Hunter in the winter months due to extreme cold, lots of snow and avalanche conditions.
As Dupre and Pascale began coming back down, they ran into four ladies from the Park Service who were dog mushing. It was a relief to see people after spending so much time on the mountain, said Pascale.
On March 2 the couple flew to Katishna, the last stop on the Denali Park Road. From there they skied 25 miles to the mountain, set up camp and began their climb. They hoped to finish by March 15, but in the end, they readjusted their goal and hope to make it back to Katishna by March 25.
“It’s been a great experience, and we will have a great story to tell,” said Dupre.
As for Pascale, she said she couldn’t wait to get back to Grand Marais and pay a visit to one of their main sponsors, Voyageur Brewing. She hoped there would an IPA waiting for her. Bet on it, and bet it will be cold with many stories to follow.
About the climbers
Lonnie Dupre has called Grand Marais his home for many years. He was born in 1961 and is descendant on his mother’s side of Jacques Cartier, the French explorer who founded Quebec.
When he isn’t working as a carpenter, he is either planning a trip or taking a trip to the furthest freezing reaches of the globe through his OneWorldEndeavors organization. Dupre mixes adventure and scientific study in collaborations with scientists and researchers who are studying the effects of global warming on the coldest places on the planet. He has won many awards throughout his career and been featured in magazines and on TV.
Pascale Marceau was born and raised in Sudbury, Ontario and later moved to Ottawa. She spent time in the Adirondacks, New York, and the Green Mountains of Vermont where she discovered backcountry skiing and mountaineering. Today Marceau is an engineering consultant and lives in the Canadian Rockies where she is focused on climbing and alpinism.
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