 Reduction of North Pole summer ice cap, 1979 to 2003; Lonnie Dupre’s Arctic expedition route.
Julian Cribb, Tuesday, 9 November 2004 In May two intrepid explorers will set out on the first summer crossing of the Arctic icecap ever attempted. Their goal – to assess on the ground the impact of global warming on the pole Among the world’s endangered ecosystems few are disappearing as rapidly and on so vast a scale as the Arctic. It has recently been estimated that 40-50 per cent of the Arctic sea-ice now melts each summer – but no-one knows for sure.
One man determined to find out is Arctic expeditioner Lonnie Dupre. In May 2005 he and fellow explorer Eric Larsen will set out, on skis and by kayak, to attempt the first summer crossing of the top of the world. They hope that the sheer distance, which they must cover by sea – unprecedented in history – will alert humanity to the peril and pace of global warming.
The 43-year-old Dupre is a veteran of the Arctic: from 1997-2001 he and Australian explorer John Hoelscher made the first journey around Greenland, in three stages.
Dupre and Larsen plan to move out onto the sea ice from Cape Arctichesky, Siberia, and travel via the North Geographic Pole to an intended landfall on Ellesmere Island, Canada, about 100 days later.
Wearing robust, single-piece thermal dry suits designed to breathe with their exertions in the humid, –10 to +40C conditions, the pair will paddle and haul their two kayaks across a hazardous, fog-shrouded vista of fractured sea ice and open water in the Arctic Ocean.
Their lightweight ‘slaks’ (or sled-kayaks), made from ultra-high-density polyethylene, are designed to be hauled over solid ice. Laden with provisions for four months, each slak will weigh nearly 140kg. Trekking 10 hours a day, much of it over sea ice, both men will consume 5,500 calories of rations a day – twice the average intake. Their aim is to make 21km per day through a jigsaw landscape of pack ice with jagged ridges thrust upwards by pressure. Myriad intersecting channels of water separate the constantly moving pieces. At least 30 per cent of their journey – possibly more - will be by water, among rounded ice pans marshalled by ocean currents. They will have to skirt treacherous zones of thin ice and aggregations of floating, pulverized brash ice.
Throughout the trek, Dupre and Larsen will take snow and ice samples. Paul Mayewski, director of the Global Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine, will analyse them later for pollutants and atmospheric indicators of climate change.
Global warming is most pronounced in Polar Regions. Dupre says he is shocked at the continuing loss of the Arctic Ocean’s sea-ice cover in summer. Average Arctic summer temperatures have risen by about 1.2 degrees per decade since the 1980s. The ice’s original thickness has been substantially reduced in the past four decades. The exact extent of its summer area reduction is unclear: scientific estimates range between 15 and 50 per cent. Dupre hopes to shed light on the mystery.
“Recent findings indicate that sea ice cover in the Arctic is declining by 9 percent per decade. Scientists suggest that this reduction in sea ice cover could lead to even greater warming in the Arctic, as open water absorbs more incoming solar radiation, and hence heat, than does ice,” he says
“Can you imagine a more powerful image to portray the dramatic effects of global climate change than two kayaks floating in the middle of the Arctic Ocean a place most people envision as completely frozen?”
During the northern winter the pair of explorers trained hard, hauling heavily laden kayaks over frozen lakes in Canada and dragging heavy truck tyres through the woods. Dupre prepares meticulously for his expeditions, choosing only the best clothing and equipment.
Exceptional endurance, mental toughness, resourcefulness and a well-honed ability to distinguish between calculated risk and foolhardiness complete a survival package that has taken him safely through 17 years and 25,000km of trekking on skis, kayak, dog sled and on foot.
After high school in his home of Minnesota, Dupre headed to Alaska in 1983, where he worked as a salmon fisherman and carpenter, snowshoeing through remote snowscapes in his spare time.
Returning to Minnesota in 1986, he financed his passion for exploration by building and restoring log cabins for people seeking a spartan life in the wilderness. He revelled in skiing and dog-sledding through Minnesota-Canadian border lands, and conducted dog-sled tours before embarking on the first of his six Arctic expeditions in 1989 – a 12-man Russian-U.S. dog-sled expedition through far eastern Russia to mark the end of the Cold War.
He met Kelly, his wife-to-be, in 1989, while planning his North West Passage
Expedition, the first east-to-west traverse of the Canadian Arctic: a 185-day,
5,665 kilometre trek by dog sled and ski.
“We were married for eight months, then I was away for eight months,” he says.
While Dupre and his wife find the long separations difficult, Kelly is a “huge supporter” of his career. “Now, when she thinks I’ve been home too long, she looks at her watch and says: ‘Don’t you have an expedition to go on’?”
Lonnie Dupre travels the Arctic Kelly Dupre prefers to paint it. In 2001 she wrote and illustrated a children’s book, “The Raven’s Gift”, about her husband’s encounter with a raven in Greenland during the first, 1,600km leg of his circumnavigation by kayak of the world’s biggest island.
Dupre and Australian John Hoelscher completed the expedition around Greenland in three legs, between 1997 and 2001,. The journey placed enormous demands on their stamina – and the first leg, in particular, severely tested their resolve. Exhausted after weeks of paddling, they were about to quit when they heard the plaintive call of a raven from a nearby cliff. Dupre investigated and the raven flew close enough for him to see a piece of driftwood entangled in musk-ox fur on one of its claws. He managed to catch the bird and cut away its potentially lethal burden. Freed, the bird flew around him, then landed nearby and squawked several times before flying off.
“I felt we were communicating,” says Dupre. “It seemed to know it needed my help to survive,” he says. Inspired, he and Hoelscher resumed paddling. In 2001, they completed the first ever circumnavigation of Greenland by kayak.
Dupre described their epic journey in his own book, “Greenland Expedition: Where Ice is Born”. A skilled nature photographer, he has also published many articles about his expeditions.
His thirst for exploration is unquenched, but his seventh expedition has a purpose beyond the personal challenge. He will film it for a documentary and publish a book to draw attention to the impact of global warming on the Arctic Ocean. Online college classes will be designed and offered through Hamline University in St Paul, Minnesota, on subjects including global warming, Arctic ecology and history of Arctic exploration. People worldwide will be able to track their progress through updates on a website, www.oneworldexpedition.com.
Dupre attributes his obsession with the top of the world to “Arctic fever” – a chronic but addictive malady that draws its victims repeatedly back to the icy wastes.
He is also moved by his friendship with the Inuit people, his love of their culture, and by his concern for other hardy but vulnerable denizens of the Arctic
Circle: polar bears, seals, caribou and birds like ptarmigan and ravens.
Any loss of the Arctic Ocean’s ice cover is bad news for polar bears in particular.
The amphibious predators are powerful swimmers, but no match for seals in open water. They hunt by ambush, waiting by holes in the ice for their prey to surface. Dupre says the bears will starve and could become extinct if summer sea ice disappears completely by 2050, as some scientists are predicting.
By late summer, the polar bears roaming the seven million square kilometres of pack ice out on the Arctic Ocean between Canada, Greenland and Siberia are lean and hungry. Their natural curiosity and hunger make them a threat to any human entering their realm.
Lonnie Dupre laments the fact that the bears are increasingly at risk as global warming erodes the Arctic Ocean’s summer ice cover. Nevertheless when he and Larsen attempt to cross the Arctic Ocean, they will take measures to avoid any misadventure that might augment the bears’ standard diet of seal flesh.
Dupre and Hoelscher had an unnerving polar bear moment during their Greenland circumnavigation. Confined by ice to a narrow inshore channel, they watched in alarm as two large bears playing on a nearby hillside spread-eagled themselves and slid down to investigate the unfamiliar sound of plastic paddles hitting the ice.
“By the time we untangled our rifles, they had moved downwind to get our scent,” Dupre recalls, adding with a smile: “Apparently we smelled so bad after weeks without bathing that they ran in the opposite direction.” Possibly, he adds on a more serious note, the bears were simply not hungry.
On the Arctic Ocean, there will be no sled dogs to wake them and keep bears at bay. “The bears are amazingly unafraid,” says Dupre. “A bear will stalk the perimeter until it gets a whiff downwind, then come right in. After hauling a 300-pound sled for 10 hours, we’ll be sleeping pretty hard.
“We’ll set up a perimeter trip wire, linked to flares on bamboo stakes. If a bear runs into the wire, it will set off a flare, and the bang should wake us. We’ll be carrying lightweight firearms for protection, and a flare pistol. You have to be prepared.”
Dupre will indeed be prepared. In summer 2004, he travelled across the Arctic Ocean by icebreaker to preview the ice conditions. Barring the unforeseen, he is quietly confident his arduous expedition will succeed.
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