We were saddened to hear that 50-year-old polar adventurer Lonnie Dupre has abandoned his attempt to be the first person to climb Denali, solo, in the dark frigid Alaskan winter. He’d used up quite a bit of food and fuel being pinned down in his 4×4 snow cave for a week, and the weather over the coming week looked very spotty. No, not spotty: it looked horrendous, with more blasting winds and spit-freezing cold. So he threw in the towel and started downhill.
Here at Recreati.com, we’re mostly about finding the ways that the average older guy and gal enjoy the world outdoors, and not so much about extreme, record-setting expeditions like Dupre’s. But this was a thrilling adventure, and great fun to track from afar. Thrilling and—appropriately—chilling: the simple act of dropping a glove meant 20 minutes of scrambling to retrieve it and cost him six frost-bitten fingers. Even his descent was harrowing: wind so strong that it swept his feet out from under him and a blizzard that forced him to burrow into a quickly constructed snow cave that was so shallow he had trouble drinking from his water bottle.
He got back to base camp yesterday, thanks in part to a full moon.
So we turn our eyes again to the average oldster, and find a story we’d set aside on the Fairbanks Nordic Ski Club of Fairbanks’ annual Ski Your Age in Kilometers event. For the past eight years, the club has held this fundraiser the day after Christmas. (Proceeds go to the club’s junior racing and training program.) This year, fresh snow made the course slow and sub-zero temps made it cold. Not Lonnie Dupre cold, but cold enough: -13°F at 10:21, which might be sunrise up there this time of year.
The idea behind this event is that kids ski a reasonable distance—14 kilometers if you are 14—while their parents need to hump over the trails until they’ve reached 35 or 45 klicks, which is a pretty fair distance under the best of circumstances. And anyone older than that is looking at a long day of skiing in a location not known for long days in winter. But that didn’t stop at least one over-60 and nearly a dozen over-50 skiers.
So we tip our stocking caps to the fair folks in Fairbanks. But we wonder what it is about this state…a place that openly taunts old people to ski farther even as their muscles atrophy, that sends whiteouts to blind aged adventurers even as they are retreating? It’s too soon to draw conclusions, but we’re working on a theory. And the theory is: Alaska hates old people.
Image of Lonnie Dupre’s Peary Centennial North Pole Expedition in 2009, courtesy of lonniedupre.com.
