17.2 K on Denali

Dupre climbs the West Buttress of Denali and readies for the summit

West Buttress Ridge Denali Climb 2010 Photo Credit: Thomas Suprenant, Buck Benson and Lonnie Dupre. www.oneworldendeavors.com

Lonnie Dupre is an experienced mountaineer and founder of One World Endeavors, a project that creates and leads expeditions to the coldest places on the planet with the goal of bringing awareness to these fragile environments.  This is Dupre's 3rd attempt to summit Denali in January and he is collecting microbe samples for ASC along the way.  Read on for the latest update from www.oneworldendeavors.com.

Beautiful, long and hard day on the mountain. Having left 14.2K camp shortly after 8:30am, Lonnie didn’t reach his goal and destination for today until 12 hours later at approximately 8:30pm.

Upon reaching Headwall, Lonnie spent numerous hours breaking the frozen fixed lines out of the ice putting him at the top of the headwall/West Buttress Ridge at 4pm. He traveled the entire West Buttress in the dark, all while reporting -35F temperature with 40mph wind. The support team did not hear from Lonnie until almost 11pm, after the construction of his snow cave had been finished. Lonnie called while beginning to warm the snow cave for a well-deserved good nights rest.

Needless to say a very difficult day, but a very successful one. Tomorrow is a mandatory rest and acclimation day, after that, next stop is the elusive summit. We are carefully monitoring weather for Sunday, but it is too early to tell.