The Peary-Henson Commemorative Expedition

Published in 2009

To commemorate one of the most famous – and controversial – early polar expeditions, Rolex Laureate Lonnie Dupre and two other explorers have reached the North Pole after a daunting, 54-day trek across the ice.

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©Peary Centennial North Pole Expedition

The Peary-Henson Commemorative Expedition Team, with 48-year-old Dupre as expedition leader, arrived at the North Pole on 25 April 2009. Dupre and his team – Lebanese adventurer Maxime Chaya and Texan mountaineer Stuart Smith – were overwhelmed to be at the North Pole, but they expressed deep concern about the disappearing ice of the Arctic.

During an Arctic career spanning 20 years, Dupre has travelled over 22,500 kilometres throughout the high Arctic by dog team, ski and kayak. His path has often followed in the footsteps of the great Arctic explorers of the last century – Robert E. Peary, Roald Amundsen, and Knud Rasmussen. On 1 July 2006, on their second attempt, Dupre and co-explorer Eric Larsen reached the Pole after covering 769km in 62 days in an historic expedition that raised awareness of the melting of the polar ice cap. The expedition was partly funded by Dupre’s 2004 Rolex Award.

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©Peary Centennial North Pole Expedition

This veteran of the Arctic said on 25 April: “I've never seen such large areas of recently open water. Not even in summer. These leads were very large. Some of them 4 kilometers across and as for east and west as the eye could see.” Dupre added that ice floes built up over many years called multi-year ice were almost non-existent. “There's only young ice, one to two years of age. That's a clear result of climate change.”

Dupre’s expedition commemorated that of American explorers Robert E. Peary and Matthew A. Henson who, 100 years earlier, claimed to be the first people to reach the North Pole, along with a team of four Inuit – Oatah, Egingwah, Seegloo and Ookeah.

However, there has been doubt – even to the present day – over whether Peary and Henson did reach the North Pole in 1909. Dupre is firmly convinced that Peary’s claim on history was justified. “I didn't want to let the memory of Robert Peary down,” he said after reaching the North Pole. “I believe Peary did make the Pole in 1909, and I didn't want to do anything less on this special expedition to honour [Perry and Henson’s] achievement."

Dupre, Smith and Chaya had set out from Ellesmere Island, in the Canadian Arctic, on March 4th. They travelled on skis, pulling 1.5-metre sledges carrying their provisions. The North Pole is 770km from Ellesmere Island, but the team journeyed about 1,050km in total, often travelling many kilometres out of their way to find a snow bridge or area of ice strong enough to bear their weight. They endured temperatures of -48˚C. Dupre lost 13 kilograms of his original 75kg during the expedition. “It was very, very hard,” Dupre said. “We were eating 8,000 calories a day and burning 10,000.” The expedition was re-supplied once by air en route and met a dogsled team near the end of the trip to pick up food when supplies were low.

It was a race against both time and what is called the Polar Treadmill – southward-heading ice drift that snatches away kilometres as explorers approach the North Pole. In the final days, for every kilometre they skied, they lost about a third of the distance to the "treadmill" pushing them back.

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©Peary Centennial North Pole Expedition

“It felt like it was never going to end,” the Rolex Laureate said. “We had to be on skis going north for 14 solid hours per day to try to make 10 or 12 miles to the good.”

They were also under pressure to ensure they got to the Pole by 26 April. Any later and they would have missed the Russian evacuation flight back to Ice Station Barneo and, ultimately, home.

Dupre has now returned home to Grand Marais, Minnesota, in the United States. His next expedition will be an un-supported crossing of Antarctica.

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