Paddler Profile - April 2005

An Eye on the Pole: Lonnie Dupre
by Jeff Lancaster

A man with an affinity for ice and adventure walks and paddles distances that most people travel by jet.

The 16-inch steel-belted truck tire scuffs the gravel road and throws up a cloud of dust. Below, barely visible through a penumbra of agitated earth, the chilly waters of Lake Superior lap against the rugged shores of Minnesota.

Two hours earlier, Lonnie Dupre stepped from the warmth and comfort of his home and donned a waist belt and shoulder strap connecting the truck tire and harness to his 43-year-old body, and clambered his way up the steep hill he has come to know as well as the colors and curves of his own face.

Lonnie Dupre and Eric Larsen training next to the floe edge off the coast of Hudson Bay, Canada, near the Inuit settlement of Coral Harbor.

Lonnie Dupre, explorer, sea kayaker and author of Greenland Expedition: Where Ice Is Born (Creative Publishing International, 2000), is in training for the first summer crossing of the Arctic and what could become one of the greatest polar adventures of modern times.

The Minnesota-born explorer, who started kayaking just 10 years ago, has already trekked the Northwest Passage, led a dogsled-and-ski expedition across 1,200 miles of Russia’s wild and untamed northeast, and together with Australian John Hoelscher, became the first to circumnavigate Greenland, traversing more than 6,500 miles of coastline using sleds and sea kayaks. The circumnavigation stretched over three separate visits, from 1997 to 2001, with Dupre and Hoelscher covering 3,442 miles by dogsled and 3,075 miles by kayak.

“That trip was amazing,” recalls Dupre. “It took a long time, but it was worth it.”

For explorers like Dupre, time is often the greatest adversary. And when it comes to polar adventures, days, even hours, can be the difference between success and failure, life and death. Which explains the rigorous training.

“I have to be fit and strong, physically and mentally, to make such a challenge,” says Dupre. “The hard work now will pay off when we begin the crossing, of which 30 percent is open-water paddling.”
Dupre survived nearly 8,000 miles of travel in unforgiving environments without serious injury, only to get knocked off his feet by a home-improvement project.

“The May after I got back from Greenland, I was working on a construction project at home,” Dupre recalls. “I fell 22 feet from my roof and landed directly on my feet among some landscaping rocks. I broke both ankles in two places and fractured my right tibia. I spent two months in a wheelchair and another few months on crutches.”

Dupre says that the injury won’t affect his upcoming expedition.

“I’ve been giving it a good workout,” he says. “Both ankles are fine, and I’m clear and good for the trip.”
The constant training also helps prepare Dupre’s wife Kelly for the long periods of loneliness that await her during each of Lonnie’s adventures. “I figure I have the easier job of the two,” says Kelly Dupre. “At least I have the comforts of home; Lonnie has to contend with the Arctic wilderness. This approaching expedition is a little more dangerous. But I’ve hiked with him enough to know he is really good at what he does.”