During February and March 2021, social distancing should be no problem for Lonnie Dupre and Pascal Marceau. In February, the two cold-weather explorers plan to climb Alaska’s Mount Stevens (Mount Hunter’s south summit) and then move over to the Wrangell-St. Elias mountain range in southeast Alaska and attempt to climb Mount Hornby, which stands 11,645 feet, in March.
Mount Hornby is an unclimbed peak, while Mount Stevens, reaching 13,967 feet, is rarely climbed in the winter.
In June, Lonnie and an all-star team of filmmakers and explorers will take to the water, sailing from Iceland to East Greenland to film the ruggedly beautiful coastline. It will be the first time in 20 years that Lonnie will set foot on Greenland. He and John Hoelscher, an Australian, spent three years circumnavigating the 6,500 miles Greenland coastline by dogsled and kayak. Dupre says the most memorable part of those times spent with Hoelscher Greenland was the east coast.
During his time in Greenland, Dupre and the filming crew will be skiing on an ice cap in hopes of finding a rock cairn erected 85 years ago by a British expedition. Plans include lots of filming and performing archeology work on old Inuit campsites. Dupre and Hoelscher found several ancient camps they estimated to be over 1,000 years old.
The expedition on East Greenland will end back in Iceland at the beginning of August, but Lonnie plans to return to Greenland in February 2022 for a filming project titled Pulling for the Planet.
That expedition will start in the remote village of Qaanaaq in Greenland’s far north. They will travel by dog team to three small Inuit villages, including Siorapaluk, the northernmost settlement globally.
With more than 30 years of arctic adventure experience, Lonnie is continuing to build a legacy seldom seen. In 1989, he was awarded a Soviet “Sportsman’s Medal” from Mikhail Gorbachev. In 1996, he was elected as a Fellow in the National Explorers Club. His 2004 Rolex Explorer Award for Enterprise and 2005 Scott Pearlman Award followed that. Last year he was elected a Fellow in the Royal Canadian Geographic Society. Some of his accomplishments have been listed on his website and are as follows:
Dupre completed the first west to east, 3,000-mile winter crossing of Canada’s famed Northwest Passage by dog team.
He achieved the first circumnavigation of Greenland, a 6,500-mile using dog sled teams and kayaks.
Lonnie has pulled sleds on skis from Canada to the North Pole twice, achieving over 68 million impressions worldwide on climate change issues.
Dupre accomplished the first solo winter ascent of Alaska’s Mount Denali (20,340ft.) in January and made an alpine Ascent of Kyajo Ri (20,295 ft.) in Nepal.
During the winter, Lonnie also climbed Jeannette Peak (10,135 ft.) in British Columbia.
Lonnie made a solo ascent of Mount Quincy Adams at 12,615 feet in Alaska and made the first winter ascent of Mount Woods at 15,912 feet in the Yukon.
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