Circumnavigating Greenland
His wanderlust has led him on countless expeditions along the Arctic and polar region, and in 2001, Dupre and his teammate John Hoelscher completed the first and only non-motorized circumnavigation of Greenland via kayak (along the southern sections) and dog team (for the northern sections).
“At that time, there was very little known about Greenland and it was hard to research it from the US,” Dupre explains. “Early on, I actually took a trip to Greenland to get an idea of how the environment was different from other places in the Arctic. And then we launched our expedition and started traveling the west coast by kayak, traveling 1,250 miles on the first leg of our journey.”
Another crux of the expedition was breaking the island up into sections; there are only certain times of year that allow for safe passage when kayaking and other times for dog sledding, as well as periods when they had to stop traveling altogether. Dupre explains, “there’s total darkness in mid-winter so we couldn't travel by dog team. And then there were really dangerous periods of kayaking—due to fall storms and freezing ocean—when we couldn't be on the water.”