Adventurer Lonnie Dupre of Grand Marais is preparing to once again tackle Denali.
Lonnie Dupre believes in the motto, “If you fail the first time, try, try again.”
And so he will try again to become the first person to climb Denali (aka Mount McKinley) solo in the month of January.
Denali, located in Alaska, is North America’s highest mountain peak at 20,320 feet. With winds that can exceed 100 miles per hour and temperatures that fall below -50° F and only six hours of sunlight to work with, plus crevasses to cross, ice fields to scale and narrow paths hugging steep gorges, Denali is a beast to climb.
Last year Dupre made great time as he climbed to 17,200 feet before being stopped by the weather. With the summit only eight hours away, Dupre lay trapped in a small snow cave for seven days before deciding to go back down. He was beat from the effort, but not beaten. Although somewhat disappointed, he wasn’t discouraged, and so he once again began planning to summit Denali this January.
To train for the climb, Dupre has hiked and skied with a 50-pound pack, pulled tires, plied kettle bells, and will hone his climbing skills in Colorado, and use a hyperbaric chamber to acclimatize for the altitude prior to the expedition.
He will need all of the conditioning he can get. The climb will be arduous as he pulls a 6-foot sled and carries a backpack weighing 150 pounds. He will pull the sled with a 14-foot lightweight aluminum ladder. The ladder will help span crevasses should he slip into one. He will also use extra-long skis for bridging hidden crevasses. At 14,000 feet he will stow the ladder and sled and switch to backpacking supplies up the steeper sections of the mountain.
Along the way Dupre will mark the route with bamboo wands. He will carry 250 wands and place them at dangerous crevasse crossings and mark his camps to help ensure a safe return down the mountain. His camps will consist of snow caves because tents can’t withstand the high winds on Denali.
As he climbs for the summit Dupre will keep the world posted through daily blog entries, photographs and audio posts on the expedition’s website and social network. One can follow Lonnie’s progress online by tracking his personal beacon using interactive Google Earth Maps. His goal is to bring attention to Alaska’s vanishing glaciers. Should he reach the summit he will do something big that will be documented by aircraft.
But as Lonnie found out last winter, even for a worldrenowned arctic explorer this climb presents plenty of obstacles. Only nine expeditions totaling 16 people have ever reached Denali’s summit in winter. Six people died during those climbs and only one team, three Russian climbers, have ever climbed to the summit in January.
The trip is estimated to cost $46,775. Dupre has three main sponsors, Energizer, Fox River Socks and Herbalife and several fundraisers have been conducted or will be conducted to help defray expenses.
When he’s done he will produce a film and an audio documentary for radio as well as submit his photography for publication. He will also be available for speaking engagements and will hopefully write a book. He has two other books, Greenland Expedition— Where Ice is Born, published in 2000, and was a contributing writer in They Lived to Tell the Tale, published in 2007.
As Dupre prepares he can be followed on facebook.com/ lonniedupre or twitter.com/ lonniedupre or lonniedupre.com.
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