Courtesy of Lonnie Dupre
For more than 35 years, Grand Marais–based explorer Lonnie Dupre has chased winter to the ends of the earth—crossing Canada’s Northwest Passage by dog team, circumnavigating Greenland by kayak and dogsled, pulling sleds to the North Pole to raise awareness on issues of global warming, and standing alone on Denali’s summit in frigid January temperatures (with only six hours of sunlight each day).
Earlier this year, Dupre added a new chapter to his repertoire: launching Nord Hus, a 36-foot, steel-hulled Bluewater sloop, from Grand Marais and sailing—by way of the Great Lakes, St. Lawrence Seaway, Newfoundland, and the Labrador Sea—to northern Greenland and the Canadian Arctic. The boat was purpose-built for high latitudes (insulated hull, custom mast, cutter rig, etc.) and serves as a floating base for explorers, filmmakers, scientists, and—Dupre’s favorite word—the curious.
By August 2025, Nord Hus had logged more than 3,400 nautical miles, reaching Aasiaat, Greenland, where Dupre and his partner Pascale Marceau paused the expedition and stored the boat for winter. They have their sights set on returning in June 2026 to push farther north, reconnect with Inuit friends, and gather data on marine mammals and little auk nesting colonies. We spoke with Dupre about his Minnesota upbringing, the romance of leaving home by ship like the old polar legends, what he’s seeing on the front lines of climate change, and what it means to live simply.
You grew up in Minnesota. What was your childhood like?
I grew up in central Minnesota, just north of the Twin Cities, in a little farming community called Centerville. We had a 12-acre cash crop farm where we grew mostly sweet corn, among other things like watermelon and muskmelon, pickles and vegetables, and stuff. We would harvest in the mornings, then sell it on the road out of a pickup truck. We did that my whole youth and into my early teens. And we did that as a family. My grandparents lived just across the field from our farmhouse.
Was there a moment when you knew adventure would be your life’s path?
A counselor at my high school asked me, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ I went through all those pages of materials, all the occupations that were available to people, and I wasn’t interested in any of them. So, I decided that I would keep doing what I was doing: building small, authentic dovetail log cabins. I’d build them with my hands, like the old days, and keep them small and quaint but very high quality. I needed something to do with my hands that was tangible. It was a tangible product. You know, it showed what you made for your work.
But I still struggled with what I wanted to do outside of that. My love was being in the wilderness, and I was reading books about polar explorers. I realized there’s a whole other world north of Minnesota that I could explore. And then I went on to figure out that there were people living, like, 2,000 miles further north. I wondered, ‘How do they survive? How do they live?’ That started my whole push toward Arctic exploration and delving into the Inuit culture. I moved from Minnesota to Alaska, and I lived up there for several years, commercial fishing.
Eventually, I realized snowshoeing around wasn’t getting me where I needed to go. I wanted to find out how to get to these places faster, so I got a dog team. And then I realized if I could combine the dog team and some skis, I could see a lot of the Arctic. From there, I went on to launch some major polar expeditions over the years, namely circumnavigating Greenland and crossing the Northwest Passage via dog team. And that gave me a two-for-one; it allowed me to spend time in the Arctic, which I loved to do, and visit Inuit communities, which also was an inspiration. I learned so much from them about how to live and survive in the Arctic—not just live but do it comfortably.
What inspired your latest expedition—sailing from Grand Marais to Greenland?
I first got inspired by the old polar explorers, like Robert Peary, Roald Amundsen, and Fridtjof Nansen, who all started their polar expeditions from their very own ships, leaving from their homes and going to the high Arctic or down toward Antarctica to launch their expeditions. And I wanted, kind of in a romantic way and a little bit nostalgia, to do it myself with my own ship from my hometown. All the other polar expeditions I’ve done in the past have either been by ski or by dog team or pulling sleds or climbing mountains in the winter, that kind of thing.
Photo by Pascale Marceau
Floating on water is a different way of seeing the land, seeing the culture, and seeing this whole Arctic realm that I’m used to seeing in winter on skis. And then in doing so, that created a whole bunch of other challenges. Everything that goes along with a sailboat—you’ve got lines and masts and rigging and motor issues. You’ve got electronic equipment for navigation, all that kind of stuff. And even though a lot of this stuff comes naturally to me in terms of the navigation and being aware of the climate and terrain that we’re going into, I had the challenge of everything that goes with a material object like a sailboat, then on top of that, a crew that you’re responsible for. That was all new for me. But I like to take on a challenge by jumping in with both feet, like I do with most everything. Not blindly but, you know, jumping in and committing, right?
I wanted to show people, geographically, that it’s possible. If you have a dream to go from Minnesota all the way through the Great Lakes, through the St. Lawrence Seaway, through the Gulf of St. Lawrence, across the Labrador Sea and reach Greenland, if you have the courage and the drive, it’s possible.
What challenges did you face at sea?
The biggest challenge was mechanical, because we’re on a schedule. If the wind wasn’t blowing in our direction or against us, then we had to use a motor, and you have to keep the motor running. So, being a diesel mechanic was probably the last thing I would ever choose as an occupation, because it takes a really special person to understand how the mechanics of all that work.
But I was forced to learn how to be a rough diesel mechanic and also understand all the intricacies in the workings of a boat. It’s not just the motor itself, but it’s the driveshaft going out, turning the propeller, keeping water out of the boat, the wind working with the sails, adjusting the rigging, all that kind of stuff. It was a big learning curve, but like I said, I jump in with both feet and force myself to be thrown into the uncomfortable spot of that.
And I think for a lot of folks, it’s not fun to be in a very uncomfortable situation for extended period of time, but it’s one of the best ways to learn. It comes with its own adventures, of course.
Did you have to teach yourself sailing, or was it already a passion?
For me, everything I do has to have a purpose. It needs to be a purpose driven. I don’t even take vacations. When I take a vacation, it’s like, well, OK, I want to go to St. John, Newfoundland, for instance, but I’m there because the terrain is interesting, the culture is interesting, I want to learn about that, or it’s always purpose-built projects. So, for sailing, I taught myself. I just jumped in with both feet, and having done expeditions most of my life and been into the construction business as well, it wasn’t a big leap. I’m a quick learner based on my background.
You’ve often tied your expeditions to raising awareness about climate change.
I’ve been talking about climate change since the early 2000s, now going on maybe 25 years, I suppose, maybe a little more. It’s a tough subject because we’ve been aware of climate change since the late ’60s, and we have done virtually nothing to mitigate it. I get a little burnt out because I’m not seeing any progress from our country here in mitigating that. Actually, I’m seeing the opposite, and the ice is melting on the Greenland Ice Sheet and in the polar regions on the sea ice, it’s melting drastically. I was there 25 years ago, when we rounded the island by kayak and dog team. Now, the Danish government is surveying the Greenland coast to create new coastline maps because the ice is pulled so far away that it’s creating new topography. When you have to change the map because it’s changing so fast, there you go. And when I was there, I witnessed this. It was like almost a different land that I was looking at than I did 25 years ago.
I was also doing some fishing many years ago in a deep fjord up in the northwest part of Greenland, with some Inuit hunters. And when we were drilling through the sea ice, it was about 6.5 to 7 feet thick. Matter of fact, it was so deep that we had to use a long-handled dirt shovel to get the ice out. When I went back in 2022, same fjord, same time of year, same location, the ice was only 18 inches thick. So, based on that melting process over that many years, within 9 to 10 years, that fjord will be ice free. So, given the fact that 75% of all travel by polar Inuit people is done on sea ice, from village to village by dog team or snow machine, when that ice is no longer there, they cannot travel anymore because there’s no network or roads between villages in Arctic Canada or Greenland. That would landlock these communities to basically postage stamp-sized pieces of property, where they can’t go anywhere. They can’t go hunting, they can’t go visit their relatives, they can’t do any of that stuff. It’s impossible. It changes their culture completely. They don’t have to be scientists that know that something’s run amuck in the climate, right?
Also, that’s what we found during our sailing project is that the climate is very unstable. You either have two days of gale-force winds where you can’t go anywhere, then the next two days is dead flat calm. There’s no in between. Those are very, very difficult sailing conditions. And I’m hearing it from other sailors that we ran across, other fishermen. Northern Quebec through the St. Lawrence Seaway and Labrador and Newfoundland, that is all fishing communities. They’re all talking about climate change, how things are changing there, how they’re getting less snow, or how the seas are more unstable and more dangerous for fishing. Also, how the fisheries are changing, the waters are getting warmer, so the lobster aren’t being caught. Let’s say, the lobster fishing industry in Maine is being reduced because the water’s getting too warm for the lobsters, but yet the lobsters are moving north. Then, in northern Labrador and Newfoundland, the lobsters are good, but they’ve never had them before. So, everything’s shifting. Both sea and land.
So, when I talk to people about climate change, the bottom line, we’re still using old technology of burning fossil fuels. And until we get off that, it’s going to continue to get warmer and warmer around the world. It’s kind of a grim situation, actually. What I tell people to do now is just prepare—prepare for climate change. Because until governmental legislators, which have let us down all these years, until things change with them, and it’s going to take government regulations. We’re not going to solve climate change driving an electric vehicle or changing light bulbs, though it helps. It’s nice, but it’s not going to change the magnitude of what we’re up against right now. So, my recommendation is voting. If you vote, vote for somebody who cares about the environment because if they care about the environment, they already care about health care. They already care about education. They already care about that stuff, if they care about the environment. And because we want to leave something stable and livable for our children.
When you are thousands of miles from home, what most reminds you of Minnesota?
The sense of community I find in these small villages. What I miss most while I’m away is the sweet smell of pine trees.
Your motto is to ‘live simply’—why is that philosophy important to you?
I’ve lived most of my life without running water, without electricity, just recently. I always had that philosophy—big things, big problems, little things, little problems. So, I lived in small houses that were under 500 square feet. Matter of fact, I don’t think I’ve ever lived in a house larger than 600 square feet. I’m a builder. I build little log cabins, and I promote that style of living, especially for people getting started in their life, because the old cliché of living the American dream is unsustainable a lot of times, you know, getting a big house, getting a car, getting all this stuff. What that does is tie you down to working nine to five till you’re 60 years old, and not having the freedom that people need, to go canoeing or go camping or go spend time in the outdoors. Because that’s actually the catalyst of protecting the environment and outdoors. When you have an invested interest, then you want to protect that. The more people that spend their time outdoors want to protect it. For me, it is all about living compact but comfortable, then use that extra time to be in the outdoors.
What advice would you give someone dreaming of their own adventure?
A lot of people don’t like change or difficulty, but it’s OK to jump in and be a little scared, because that’s where the adventure starts, you know? That’s where life begins because it’s not an expedition or an adventure, if things don’t go wrong. Those are the things that you remember the most. And people never regret it. They find out that a new chapter opens up in their life and it wouldn’t have happened without a bit of sacrifice. Believe in yourself, take ‘can’t’ out of your vocabulary, and be diligent in preparations research and training. I believe nature offers the best cure from what ails many of us fenced in by urban lifestyle. More and more, there is a disconnect with nature when time is used up on electronics. Nature provides a sense of calm, of being grounded… a sense of place. There is a whole other world out there explore and care for, and it’s there to care for you.
Lonnie Dupre’s Expeditions
- 1991-1992: First west-to-east winter dog-team crossing of Canada’s Northwest Passage (3,059 miles)
- 2001: First nonmotorized circumnavigation of Greenland (6,500 miles)
- 2006 & 2009: Ski expeditions from Canada to the North Pole, raising global awareness on climate change
- 2015: First solo January winter ascent of Alaska’s Denali/Mount McKinley (20,340 feet)
- 2015-2016: Alpine ascent of Kyajo Ri (20,295 feet), Nepal
- 2018: First recorded ascent of Jeannette Peak (10,135 feet), British Columbia
- 2018: Solo ascent of Mount Quincy Adams (13,615 feet), Alaska
- 2019: First winter ascent of Mount Wood (15,912 feet), Yukon
- 2021: Winter ascent of Mount Frances (10,450 feet), Alaska
- 2025: Sailed from Grand Marais, Minnesota, to Aasiaat, Greenland (3,450 nautical miles)
