A smiling Lonnie Dupre arrived at the base of Mount Hunter this past week and began preparing a base camp so he could start his epic climb to summit Mount Hunter. Photo courtesy of Lonnie Dupre
Lonnie Dupre left Talkeetna on Monday, Jan. 7, flying into the Alaska Range to the base of Mount Hunter (14,573ft) to attempt its first winter solo ascent.
Hunter is the steepest and most technical of the three great peaks in Denali National Park.
“The approach up and through a tricky icefall followed by sustained technical climbing with a heavy pack will put me at the edge of my capabilities,” said Dupre.
Jut the landing alone on the Kahiltna glacier in winter’s low light and unstable weather is no easy task. In order for the plane to land, it has to be calm and clear to take advantage of the small window of sun needed to provide the depth of field on the surface of the glacier. On Monday it was clear and cold. After allowing temperatures to warm up a bit, Talkeetna Air Taxi’s Paul Roderick flew Dupre in.
Due to bad weather, Dupre had to postpone his attempt to climb Mount Hunter last year.
Once his base camp was set up, and after having stashed a week’s worth of supplies at basecamp for his return, the next day Lonnie expected to start traveling on skis towards the base of Mount Hunter.
After four attempts, in 2015 Lonnie became the first person to solo climb and summit the 20,320- foot Mount Denali in January.
During his first three attempts, from 2011 to 2013, extreme cold and huge winds trapped Dupre in small snow caves [4 ft.x4ft.] for up to a week at a time, once while he was only 8 hours from the mountain’s top before a break in the wild winter weather allowed him a chance to get back down to safety. Lonnie took off 2014 before making his 2015 successful climb to the top of Denali.
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