Buried in a six-foot trench that he dug in the snow seven days earlier, the negative 50 degree temperature, 100 mph wind gusts and 5.4 magnitude earthquake had finally shaken Lonnie Dupre’s last amount of energy from his body. Suffering from the beginning stages of acute altitude sickness, a condition where the lack of oxygen can lead to an incredibly painful and fatal swelling of the brain, the 49-year-old had to descend back down the mountain. To Dupre, the goal of completing the first solo January ascent of Alaska’s Mt. McKinley had fallen wayside to man’s most basic instinct: staying alive.
Known for its massive crevasses and unstable weather, Mt. McKinley, the highest peak in North America, has emerged as a constant destination for climbing enthusiasts worldwide.
Although around 1,300 climbers re ach the summit each year, only 16 have attempted to do so during the unforgiving Alaskan winter, a season that reveals the sun no more than a few hours a day and has recorded temperatures of negative 110 degrees on the mountain. Of those 16 men, six have perished. Not one has reached the summit alone.
Since he began on Jan. 6, 22 days earlier, Dupre slowly ascended the icy ridges of the mountain Native Alaskans call Denali, meaning “the high one.” The ferocity of the winter winds will rip a tent sheer off the mountain, so instead Dupre dug and slept in snow trenches every night. “You dig or die. After a hard day’s work, six or seven hours of travel going uphill with very little oxygen, you’re completely exhausted,” Dupre said. “But you have to leave just enough energy for two hours of heavy-duty snow digging. You can’t say, ëI don’t feel like digging tonight.’ You’d die.”
Dupre’s plan was to climb along the West Buttress Ridge, a gradual 3,000-foot path that for years has been the staple ascent for guides and their corporate clients. Upon reaching the ridge, however, Dupre found that the winds had eroded the icy path’s width down to a meager six inches. Unable to continue on foot, he was forced to scale down onto the buttres’s vertical face, ice picking his way across 3,000 feet of rock and ice. The time consumed for such an undertaking stole the sun’s rays off the western face of McKinley, forcing Dupre to rely only on the beam of his headlamp for guidance.
The conditions worsened when Dupre finally finished the traverse. In the darkness of the Alaskan winter, he dug a six-foot trench where he remained for the next seven days, unable and unwilling to emerge into the ruthless low-pressure system that continued to pound the mountain with high winds, heavy snow and frigid temperatures.
Finally, a break in the weather allowed Dupre to surface from his hole. Low on supplies and functional fingers, Dupre, 15 pounds lighter than a week before, decided to abandon the climb and returned to base camp.
It is often asked why sportsmen like Dupre risk so much for what seems so little a reward. Beyond the glory of setting records and the allure of carving one’s place in the annals of adventure there is a much deeper, innate answer to this question. To seek adventure is to encounter fate in its most unforgiving way, to willingly put oneself in a situation beyond one’s control.
When Dupre stepped into the unknown his ultimate goal was not to complete the first solo January ascent of Mt. McKinley. It was to experience, in its most intrinsically archaic form, the feeling of being alive. Entrenched on the blustery, snowy face of “the high one”, thousands of miles from the mundane routine of day-to-day living, Lonnie Dupre achieved just that.