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InFront I I I I �----------- I � I I I I I I I I iDOGGED DETERMINATION l CIRCUMNAVIGATING GREENLAND ---------------------------------------------------------�------- ---------------------------- i : Photos: Lonnie Dupre -:- -.. - -- After 350 miles of chopping and digging and pushing and call ing to his sled dogs, adventurer Lonnie Dupre climbed a 100- foot-tall iceberg and peered out over the north coast of Greenland. He looked through a fogged-up monocular and faced an obstacle he knew he could not overcome: ice flows, hundreds of feet high and incredibly wide, were stacked up like dominoes, one after another for miles. It would take dozens of days to cut through this Arctic equivalent of a mountain range, but Lonnie and his Australian partner John Hoelscher had only 10 days of food and fuel left. They were forced to turn back, barely making it to Qaanaaq-what passes for civilization in northwestern Greenland-drained and demoralized. But as Will Steger says in the foreward of Lonnie's book, Greenland Expedition: Where Ice is Born, "His uniqueness lies in that he does it with patience, a smile and uncompromising per sistence." The emphasis is on persistence. Lonnie is now going back to Greenland to face that challenge again. In mid-February, Lonnie and John will attempt to fin ish what they started back in 1997-to become the first to cir cumnavigate Greenland. With the help of the National Geographic Society, the Thule 2000 expedition will attempt the remaining portion of the trip, from Scorsbysund along never before-explored areas of Greenland's north coast back to Cape Jefferson-the site of Lonnie's bitter disappointment. "We have better aerial reconnaissance and satellite imagery than we had before," Lonnie says from his home in Grand Marais, Minnesota. "That should allow us to choose a better route and make the 1,600-mile trip." 18